Book Talk: Dr Christopher Perkins In brief Date - 17 April 2024 Venue - Project Room 1.06, 50 George Square Speaker - Dr Christopher Perkins (Asian Studies) About the event Dr Christopher Perkins's new book, 'The Tokyo University Trial and the Struggle Against Order in Postwar Japan' (Springer, Berlin) explores the trial of over 600 students arrested at the University of Tokyo in 1969 after thousands of riot police had flooded the campus to end the students' year-long occupation of the university. The trial, which was the largest in Japanese legal history and was remarkable for being the first to hear cases in the absence of defendants and their lawyers, quickly turned into a divisive struggle over legal process that spilled out of the courts into the media. In doing so, it raised troubling questions about the legitimacy of the courts themselves. In making the case for the significance of this trial, this book places it within the context of the Japanese state's attempts to manage social order, arguing that the Tokyo University trial was a moment in which a range of postwar themes - legal process and rights, courtroom order and authority, the proper role of lawyers, the social position of students, and the legitimacy of forms of policing - crystalised in a courtroom battle that pushed at the limits of Japan's postwar sociologic order. The book also sheds new light on the students' experiences of the trial, exploring their time spent in detention and demonstrating how tensions internal to the student movement manifested during the trial process. About the speaker Dr Christopher Perkins completed a degree in Japanese Language and Contemporary Society with Education Studies at Oxford Brookes University in 2004, with one year spent at Kitakyushu University as an exchange student. After this, he worked as a teacher at four schools in Gifu for two years before returning to complete an MSc in International Relations at Royal Holloway University of London in 2007, where he went on to complete his PhD thesis entitled ‘National Thinking and the Politics of Belonging in Contemporary Japan’. He joined the University of Edinburgh as a Lecturer in January 2011. His work has appeared in journals including Japan Forum, The European Journal of Social Theory, Global Society, Television and New Media, The Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, and Asiatische Studien, as well as in numerous edited collections. His book on media and memory of the left in Japan, The United Red Army on Screen, was published by Palgrave in 2015. Read Christopher's full staff profile on our website How to attend This event is free to attend and open to all - no registration required. Are you interested in studying with us? We are the only university in Scotland to offer full undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes in both Chinese and Japanese, as well as postgraduate programmes in Korean Studies and East Asian Relations. Find out more about Asian Studies at Edinburgh Apr 17 2024 16.00 - 17.30 Book Talk: Dr Christopher Perkins An in-person discussion with Dr Christopher Perkins (Asian Studies, University of Edinburgh) on his new publication, 'The Tokyo University Trial and the Struggle Against Order in Postwar Japan', which concerns the remarkable trial of 600 Japanese students in 1969. Project Room 1.06 50 George Square University of Edinburgh EH8 9LH Find the venue
Book Talk: Dr Christopher Perkins In brief Date - 17 April 2024 Venue - Project Room 1.06, 50 George Square Speaker - Dr Christopher Perkins (Asian Studies) About the event Dr Christopher Perkins's new book, 'The Tokyo University Trial and the Struggle Against Order in Postwar Japan' (Springer, Berlin) explores the trial of over 600 students arrested at the University of Tokyo in 1969 after thousands of riot police had flooded the campus to end the students' year-long occupation of the university. The trial, which was the largest in Japanese legal history and was remarkable for being the first to hear cases in the absence of defendants and their lawyers, quickly turned into a divisive struggle over legal process that spilled out of the courts into the media. In doing so, it raised troubling questions about the legitimacy of the courts themselves. In making the case for the significance of this trial, this book places it within the context of the Japanese state's attempts to manage social order, arguing that the Tokyo University trial was a moment in which a range of postwar themes - legal process and rights, courtroom order and authority, the proper role of lawyers, the social position of students, and the legitimacy of forms of policing - crystalised in a courtroom battle that pushed at the limits of Japan's postwar sociologic order. The book also sheds new light on the students' experiences of the trial, exploring their time spent in detention and demonstrating how tensions internal to the student movement manifested during the trial process. About the speaker Dr Christopher Perkins completed a degree in Japanese Language and Contemporary Society with Education Studies at Oxford Brookes University in 2004, with one year spent at Kitakyushu University as an exchange student. After this, he worked as a teacher at four schools in Gifu for two years before returning to complete an MSc in International Relations at Royal Holloway University of London in 2007, where he went on to complete his PhD thesis entitled ‘National Thinking and the Politics of Belonging in Contemporary Japan’. He joined the University of Edinburgh as a Lecturer in January 2011. His work has appeared in journals including Japan Forum, The European Journal of Social Theory, Global Society, Television and New Media, The Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, and Asiatische Studien, as well as in numerous edited collections. His book on media and memory of the left in Japan, The United Red Army on Screen, was published by Palgrave in 2015. Read Christopher's full staff profile on our website How to attend This event is free to attend and open to all - no registration required. Are you interested in studying with us? We are the only university in Scotland to offer full undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes in both Chinese and Japanese, as well as postgraduate programmes in Korean Studies and East Asian Relations. Find out more about Asian Studies at Edinburgh Apr 17 2024 16.00 - 17.30 Book Talk: Dr Christopher Perkins An in-person discussion with Dr Christopher Perkins (Asian Studies, University of Edinburgh) on his new publication, 'The Tokyo University Trial and the Struggle Against Order in Postwar Japan', which concerns the remarkable trial of 600 Japanese students in 1969. Project Room 1.06 50 George Square University of Edinburgh EH8 9LH Find the venue
Apr 17 2024 16.00 - 17.30 Book Talk: Dr Christopher Perkins An in-person discussion with Dr Christopher Perkins (Asian Studies, University of Edinburgh) on his new publication, 'The Tokyo University Trial and the Struggle Against Order in Postwar Japan', which concerns the remarkable trial of 600 Japanese students in 1969.
