IJS Lecture: Kaoru Iokibe, "19th-Century Cholera to COVID-19: Ohioan John A. Bingham and Japan's Diplomatic Responses to Infectious Diseases"

The Institute for Japanese Studies presents:

"19th-century Cholera to COVID-19: Ohioan John A. Bingham and Japan's Diplomatic Responses to Infectious Diseases"

Kaoru Iokibe
University of Tokyo

Abstract: This talk compares Japan’s experiences during the cholera outbreak of the 19^th century and the current COVID-19 pandemic. Cholera was a challenge not only for Meiji Japan’s healthcare policies but also for its relationship to international society. Western residents repeatedly claimed immunity from the Japanese government-regulated quarantine under the “Unequal Treaties,” which were ratified at the reopening of Japan to western nations in the middle of the century.

Japan, however, found a staunch ally in John A. Bingham, a lawyer and congressman from Ohio who served as a minister to Japan from 1873 to 1885, the longest term ever for an American diplomatic representative in Japan. After his service to reunite the US after the Civil War, Bingham passionately supported Japan’s effort to restore sovereignty over the “Unequal Treaties.”

Prof. Iokibe will discuss how the collaboration between Japan and Bingham influenced Japan’s policy towards the world as well as towards infectious diseases from the 19^th century to the present.

Kaoru Iokibe earned a B.A. and his Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo. He is currently Professor at the Graduate Schools of Law and Politics, University of Tokyo. His research area is the political and diplomatic history of modern Japan. He has published three books in Japanese: Okuma Shigenobu and Party Politics: Origin of Multi-party system (2003), on the formation of the opposition party in Japan; History of Treaty Revision (2010), about Meiji Japan’s restoration of sovereignty through the revision of “unequal treaties” (now under translation into English); and History of Deception: Insincere Politics of Sincere Society (2020). Drawing on his second book and as an Academic Associate (2021-2022), Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, he is promoting his new project titled, “Treaty Management: Comparison between Meiji Amity and Commerce Treaties and Postwar Japan-U.S. Security Treaty."