- Name：REEVES, Kristopher
- Title ：Associate Professor
- Research Field：Japanese Sinitic literature, translation studies, comparative intellectual history, history of early (19th-20th century) Japanology
- Biography：
Most of the work Professor Reeves has done previously has dealt with ninth- and tenth-century Sinitic (classical Chinese) poetry written by Japanese aristocrats. He is currently working on a complete translation and study of an imperial anthology of Sinitic poetry entitled Ryōunshū, (Soaring Above the Clouds), completed in 814. More recently, his interests have shifted to the field of comparative intellectual history. He is currently exploring, and teaching course relating to, the earliest origins and subsequent development of what we now know as Japanology or Japan Studies. How did British and American visitors, scholars, missionaries, and diplomats in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries come to imagine the Japan of their day? What sort of images and metaphors did they employ when writing about Japan? Of equal interest is the manner in which Japanese intellectuals acquainted with this embryonic world of Anglophone Japanology interiorized (or rejected) the visions and interpretations embedded in those same texts. writing about their native land. Finally, in what ways have those early visions and descriptions continued to influence our own visions and expectations of modern-day Japan? Rather than providing any definitive answers, questions of this sort invite us to imagine alternative ways of engaging with the Japan of our own time.
