Japan-in-Asia Cultural Studies Program
「アジアの中の日本文化」プログラム
Contact
Field
Modern Japanese History and Religion; Transnational History
Position
Assistant Professor
Education
DPhil, History (Swire Scholar)
University of Oxford
MSc, Modern Japanese Studies (Distinction, Oxford Kobe Scholar)
University of Oxford
BA, Global Studies/East Asian Studies (summa cum laude, Valedictorian)
Akita International University
Research Interests
Religious, cultural, and intellectual history of modern Japan and the wider world; nonstate transnational history; gender; soil; God and GxD; Tohoku.
About Me
I am a historian and an Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Humanities at Nagoya University. I specialise in transnational history, with a particular focus on the cultural, intellectual, and religious lives of people in modern Japan and the wider world. Before joining Nagoya, I taught at the University of Oxford as the Tanaka Junior Research Fellow in Japanese Studies, where I also completed my DPhil in History and MSc in Modern Japanese Studies. My research has been published by The Historical Journal (Cambridge University Press), Amsterdam University Press, and Brill, among others, and I have been featured in the Historical Association’s podcast series.
Chinami OKA
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“Beyond Nation and Empire: A Transnational History of Christianity in Modern Japan.” Japanese Religions 47, forthcoming.
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“Arai Ōsui and the Transnational Reimagination of Civilization in the Late Nineteenth-Century United States.” The Historical Journal 66 (2023), 101–121.
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“The Invention, Gaming, and Persistence of the Hensachi (‘Standardised Rank Score’) in Japanese Education.” Oxford Review of Education 44, no. 5 (2018), 581–98. With Roger Goodman.
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“From Father to Mother-Father: Reimagining God and Civilization in Modern Japan.” In Washington, Garrett L. ed., Handbook of Christianity and Japanese Society (Amsterdam University Press), forthcoming.
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“A Defeated Samurai of the Boshin Civil War and the Search for a New Universalism.” In Bremner, L., Dotulong, M., and Konishi S. eds., Reopening the Opening of Japan: Transnational Approaches to Japan and the Wider World (Leiden: Brill, 2024), 300–23.
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“The Hensachi: Its Dominant Role in University Rankings.” In Snowden, P. ed., Handbook of Higher Education in Japan (Amsterdam University Press, 2021), 133–142. With Roger Goodman.
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“Pembroke Spotlight: Dr Chinami Oka on ‘Rethinking Japan's Past.’” (2025). On Pembroke College’s webpage, University of Oxford.
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“Research Spotlight.” (2024). On the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies webpage, University of Oxford.
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“Seiyō Kindai o Koete: Kindai Nihon ni okeru Kyōseiteki Modanitī no Shisō to Kōdō no Tanjō” [Beyond Western Modernity: The Emerging Thoughts and Actions of Symbiotic Modernity in Modern Japan]. In Takanashi Gakujutsu Shōrei Kikin Nenpō (2022), 393–398 (in Japanese).
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“Student Research.” (2016). In Japanese Studies at Oxford, Oxford University Japanese Studies Newsletter vol. 8.
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