Contact

Telephone
(650) 723-1556
Research Area(s)
Japan
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Jun Uchida

Professor of History
Department:
History Department
Ph.D., Harvard University, History
M.A., University of California at Berkeley, History
B.A., Cornell University, History
I am a history of Japanese empire, migration, and diaspora. My teaching and research focus on the following areas of interest:

Japanese empire in Asia and the Pacific
Colonial Korea
Comparative Colonialism
History of immigration and diaspora
Transpacific History
Settler colonialism
Decolonization and politics of memory
Oral history

My current book project, "Provincializing Empire: Ōmi Merchants in the Japanese Transpacific Diaspora," examines the diasporic history of Ōmi shōnin (merchant). Often compared to overseas Chinese and Jewish merchants, merchants of Ōmi (present-day Shiga prefecture) are famous for peddling textiles and other goods across the early modern Japanese archipelago. Far less known are their fate and activities that extended abroad after the late nineteenth century, when Japan fully entered the world of international commerce. Using the rich local archives in Shiga, my study traces such overseas strivings of Ōmi merchants and their descendants in the global age of capital and empire, from cotton trade with China to retail commerce in Korea and Manchuria, and immigration to North America.
Jun Uchida