Research ActivitiesWaseda University

Non-French scholars working on the history of Ancien Régime France can be found around the world, yet Hiroyasu Kimizuka stands out on multiple fronts. By focusing on maritime activities along the Brittany coast in the eighteenth century, Kimizuka has drawn a vivid portrait of shipmasters, merchants, seafarers, and other mercantile actors in the region. Likewise, his recent works on the ports of Lorient and Concarneau are a part of a steady stream of publications that help shed light on regional trade, economic modernization, and the emergence of the so-called Atlantic world.
Kimizuka’s work is textually empirical, meticulous, and technically sound, which reflects his craftsman-like devotion to doing difficult archival work. He has clearly not shied away from getting his hands dirty, as it were, in the local archives and painstakingly sifting through primary documents.
This is the hallmark of a historian who is dedicated to his craft. One reason why such archival research is daunting is because the hard work it entails does not always pay off.
Thankfully, that is not the case here, as Kimizuka’s piece of regional history can be connected to larger themes and issues in the field.
His findings should contribute to our understanding not only of regional French history, but of a much broader Atlantic history as well as a burgeoning overseas French empire. His work suggests how what seems like small-scale provincial commerce was, in fact, embedded in an emerging global trade network that stretched well beyond the immediate setting of Brittany. Moving forward, we expect Kimizuka to fully inject his site-specific studies into broader interpretive debates in his field, especially regarding the tension between internal locality and external expansionism in late Ancien Régime France.
Another reason why Kimizuka is a deserving recipient of the Waseda Research Award is his ability to disseminate his work in French. Non-French scholars of French history tend to publish mostly in their own language, but not so with Kimizuka. By writing extensively in French, including his doctoral dissertation from the University of South Brittany and a full-length monograph, he is able to speak to a larger global audience and make his contributions known more extensively. Furthermore, Kimizuka has succeeded in establishing fruitful partnerships with scholars in France and beyond, which is not always a given for historians.
As one expert noted, “Kimizuka is, in a sense, a local.” For a Japanese scholar of France, this is very high praise indeed.
Kimizuka’s work helps elevate the stature of Japanese scholars within the global French studies community; Waseda should be proud to call Kimizuka one of its own.