ABSTRACT
Situated at the periphery of knowledge production in the Euro-American centric scholarship, the idea of a Southeast-Asian perspective in Japanese Studies is quite a recent one. This paper exploring the possible development of such a perspective begins first with an overview of the background and its current state, including in its discussion the critical issues of language, funding and networking. This is followed with a discussion of three areas of research that capture the interest of researchers on contemporary Japan in Southeast Asia, namely Japanese occupation during World War II, popular culture and Japan-Southeast Asia intimacies. Together with a section exploring the works of popular culture and the war by Filipino scholar Karl Ian Uy Cheng, they suggest a possible Southeast-Asian perspective recognizing the complexities of historical, economic-political as well as cultural-moral contexts in producing the nuances in knowledge production. Throughout the discussion, conceptual frameworks including ‘Asia as method’, ‘Asian humanities’ and ‘Japan+ model’ are engaged in the contemplation of a Southeast Asian approach which will contribute towards the rethinking of Eurocentrism and the development of the polycenter of Japanese Studies.
