Rotem Kowner

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Rotem Kowner
רותם קובנר
Professor Rotem Kowner
Professor Rotem Kowner, 2004
Born (1960-07-11) 11 July 1960 (age 63)
Academic work
Main interestsHistory, especially the Russo-Japanese War
Notable worksThe Impact of the Russo-Japanese War
Race and Racism in Modern East Asia: Western and Eastern Constructions
and other books on Russo-Japanese War and Meiji era

Rotem Kowner (Hebrew: רותם קובנר; born 11 July 1960) is an Israeli historian and psychologist specializing in the history of modern Japan, and a full professor in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of Haifa.[1]

Early life

Rotem Kowner was born in Mikhmoret and lived his early years in the Kibbutz of Ma'ayan Tzvi. At the age of three, his family moved to Haifa, where he grew up and went to the Hebrew Reali School. Upon graduation, he entered the Israeli Navy and subsequently served as an officer on a missile boat.

Academic career

After majoring in East Asian Studies and psychology at the

race and racism in modern East Asia and in Japan in particular. Kowner maintains that the question of race, the distress over foreign racism, and the implementation of racist policies in its own colonies have been among the most critical and painful issues in the history of modern Japan and that they were also among the determinants of its national decision-making, at least until the end of World War II
.

Kowner has been as a visiting professor at Tokyo's Waseda University, the University of Geneva, and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and serves on the editorial board of several academic journals. He is the co-founder of the biennial conferences of Asian Studies in Israel and the Israeli Association of Japanese Studies (IAJS). He has been member of the university's Senate, Board of Governors, and executive committee of his own university and currently serves as the director of its liberal arts program.[4] He sits on the executive committee of the Maritime Policy & Strategy Research Center (HMS).[5]

Works

Selected books

Selected articles

  • 1998 – "Nicholas II and the Japanese Body: Images and Decision Making on the Eve of the Russo-Japanese War." The Psychohistory Review 26, 211–52.
  • 2000 – "Lighter than Yellow, But Not Enough: Western Discourse on the Japanese 'Race', 1854–1904." The Historical Journal 43, 103–31.[6]
  • 2000 – "Japan's Enlightened War: Military Conduct and Attitudes to the Enemy during the Russo-Japanese War. In The Japanese and Europe: Images and Perceptions., edited by Bert Edström, 134–51. Japan Library.
  • 2001 – "Becoming an Honorary Civilized Nation: The Russo-Japanese War and Western Perceptions of Japan." The Historian 64, 19–38.
  • 2004 – "The skin as a metaphor: Early European racial perspectives on Japan, 1548–1853." Ethnohistory 51, 751–78.[7]
  • 2011 – An Obscure History – Jews in Indonesia. Inside Indonesia 104.
  • 2017 – "When Strategy, Economics, and Racial Ideology Meet: Inter-Axis Connections in Wartime Indian Ocean." Journal of Global History 12, 228–50.
  • 2017 – "Race and Racism (in Modern Japan)." In Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese History, edited by Sven Saaler and Christopher Szpilman, 92–102. Routledge.
  • 2022 – "Time to Remember, Time to Forget: The Battle of Tsushima in Japanese Collective Memory since 1905." The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 20, issue 12, no. 3. Article 5716.
  • 2022 – "The Mir Yeshiva’s Holocaust Experience: Ultra-Orthodox Perspectives on Japanese Wartime Attitudes towards Jewish Refugees." Holocaust and Genocide Studies 36, no. 3, 295–314.
  • 2023 – “A Holocaust Paragon of Virtue’s Rise to Fame: The Transnational Commemoration of the Japanese Diplomat Sugihara Chiune and Its Divergent National Motives.” American Historical Review 128, no. 1, 31–63.

Notes

References

  • Kowner, Rotem (2006). Historical Dictionary of the Russo-Japanese War. The Scarecrow Press. .