Hitomi Koyama is an international relations theorist working at the intersection of comparative political theory, global intellectual history, and discourses Asianism in Japanese international political thought. Her first book, "On the Persistence of the Japanese History Problem: Historicism and the International Politics of History" (Routledge, 2018) asks why postwar Japanese society remains caught in an impasse over atonement for its imperialist past. Her second book, tentatively titled "Pacific Dementia: Japanese International Political Thought Under Pax Americana" investigates the epithet “peace dementia” [heiwa boke]—which suggests the Japanese people have become demented because of peace brought under the aegis of American protection—to what it reveals about the history of realist thought of a semi-sovereign Japan.

More information about Hitomi Koyama

Education

Johns Hopkins University                                        Baltimore, MD, U.S.A.
Ph.D., Political Science                                                        2015

Academic appointments

Leiden University                                                         Leiden, The Netherlands
University Lecturer                                                              January 2023 - present

Ritsumeikan University,                                            Osaka, Japan
College of Global Liberal Arts                                    April 2019 - January 2023
Associate Professor with tenure                                        

Leiden University                                                         Leiden, The Netherlands
University Lecturer                                                              February 2018 - 2019

Ryukoku University                                                       Kyoto, Japan
Visiting Research Fellow, Afrasian Research Centre    January 2017 - 2018

Australian Catholic University                                  Sydney, Australia
Postdoctoral Research Fellow,                                           January - December 2016
Institute for Social Justice                    

Key publications

“Japan and historical justice under liberal internationalism” International Affairs, Volume 99, Number 1, January 2023

On the Persistence of the Japanese ‘History Problem’: Historicism and the International Politics of History, Routledge, Interventions Series, 2018

With Barry Buzan, “Rethinking Japan in mainstream international relations” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Vol. 0 (2018) 1-28

“Historicism, Coloniality, and Culture in Wartime Japan” for Decolonial Temporalities, Contexto Internacional, Vol. 38(3) Sep/Dec 2016

“On the Gesture of ‘I Prefer Not To’: Rethinking the Historical Titles and Territorial Claims Surrounding the Dokdo/Takeshima/Liancourt Rock” in Victor Teo and Haruko Satoh ed. Japan’s Island Troubles with China and Korea: Prospects and Challenges for Resolution, Politics in Asia Series, Routledge 2018.

“On the Necessary and Disavowed Subject of History in Postwar ‘Japan’” in Kosuke Shimizu eds., Critical International Relations Theories in East Asia: Relationality, Subjectivity, and Pragmatism, Routledge 2019.

Administrative experience