Baba, Ai: Travel Grant - 2016-2017

This project investigates why and how the Japanese empire promoted marriage between Japanese and racialized Koreans and Taiwanese in Japan, when Western empires were condemning interracial marriages in the first half of the twentieth century. It will also examine the experiences of Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese people who intermarried during the wartime in Japan, often forgotten or overlooked in national histories. One of the main aims of this project is to study the Japanese empire in a transnational context, in terms of both history and research, to fill in the gaps of historiography on the Japanese empire and modern Japan, as well as to contribute to studies on empires in general.