Harald Fuess

Harald Fuess is a German East Asian scholar and professor at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg . Since 2009 he has held the chair for cultural and economic history in the Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context” at Heidelberg University. Since 2019 he has been director of the Heidelberg Center for Transcultural Studies (HCTS) and the Heidelberg Graduate School for Humanities and Social Sciences (HGGS).

Live and act

Fuess grew up in France and Germany and studied at Princeton University (BA) and Harvard University (MA, Ph.D). His PhD supervisors were Albert Craig and Harold Bolitho. He lived in Japan for almost two decades and was elected President of the European Association for Japanese Studies (EAJS) for the term of office from 2008 to 2011 , to which he had been a member of the executive board since 2000.

Since summer 2009, Fuess has been Professor of Cultural and Economic History at the Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context” at Heidelberg University , coordinator of the Korea Working Group at Heidelberg University and teaches at the Center for East Asian Studies and at the Heidelberg University's History Department. Before accepting the offer to Heidelberg, he taught modern Japanese history at the University of Sheffield in Great Britain and at Sophia University in Japan.

In his publications he deals with the history of Japan, gender issues, consumption, cultural / economic relationships and cultural exchange processes in Eurasia . He is also a Top Global University Project Professor at Kyoto University and a member of the International Advisory Board of Tōhoku University in Sendai .

Research areas

In his research work, Fuess deals with the economic and social history of Europe, East Asia, and in particular Japan in a global context. He examines the effects of Western industrial and commercial capitalism on East Asian economies and cultures during the 19th century. His case studies explore and in-depth topics such as arms trafficking, contract port companies, consular jurisdiction, international epidemics, diplomatic disputes over trademarks, the role of the multilingual press, multinational economic histories, and transcultural mergers of consumer cultures.

Publications

• with Robert Hellyer (Ed.): The Meiji Restoration: Japan as a Global Nation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.
• Unequal Treaties, Consular Jurisdiction, and Treaty Port Society. In: Sven Saaler, Christopher Szpilman (Eds.) Handbook of Modern Japanese History. Routledge, 2017
• The Struggle for State Sovereignty and the Economic Law of the Fittest: Europe and Trademark Protection in Japan and East Asia, 1884-1923 . Special Issue  ZJapanR / J.Japan.L., 2016
• Does Taste Matter in History? Making Sense of the History of the Senses in  How to Learn? Nippon / Japan as Object, Nippon / Japan as Method edited by Christopher Craig, Enrico Fongaro and Akihiro Okazaki (Mimesis International), 199–215, 2016.
• E. Meyer & Co. at the Eastern Frontiers of Capitalism: The Leading Western Merchant House in Korea, 1884-1914. In: Journal of Business History. Volume 62, number 1, 2016, pp. 3-30.
• Informal Imperialism and the 1879 Hesperia Incident, Containing Cholera and Challenging Extraterritoriality in Japan. In: Japan Review. Volume 27, 2014, pp. 103-140.
• Adultery and Gender Equality, 1868-1945. In: Susan Burns, Barbara Brooks (Eds.): Gender and Law in the Japanese Imperium. University of Hawai`i Press, 2014, pp. 109-135.
• Self-regulation of a foreign colony: German consular jurisdiction in Japan and Korea. In: ZJapanR / J.Japan.L. Volume 36, 2013, pp. 53-93.
• 明治 期 の 結婚 と 離婚. 異 文化 社会 的 視点 で 見 た 近代 社会 の 遷移 [Marriage and Divorce in Meiji Japan. The Transition to Modern Society as Seen from a Different Socio-Cultural Perspective]. In: Satomi Kurosu (ed.): 歴 史 人口 学 か ら み た 結婚 ・ 離婚 ・ 再婚 [Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage as Seen from Historical Demography] Reitaku University Press, 2012, pp. 157-189.
• International Trade in East Asia, 1650-2000 and Foreign Investments in East Asia, 1850-2000 . In Peter Stearns (Ed.): Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World: 1750 to the Present . Oxford University Press, 2008.
• Adultery as a Crime: The European Contribution to Women Discrimination in Japan . In ZJapanR / J.Japan.L. 24 (winter) , pp. 107-136, 2007.
• Investment, Importation, and Innovation: Genesis and Growth of Beer Corporations in Pre-War Japan . In Janet Hunter and Cornelia Storz (Eds.): Institutional and Technological Change in Japan's Economy: Past and Present . London: Routledge, 2005, pp. 43-59.
• Men in the Women's Kingdom: Fatherhood in Taishô Japan . In Gail Lee Bernstein, Andrew Gordon, and Kate Nakai (Eds.) Public Spheres, Private Lives in Modern Japan 1600-1950 . Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005, pp. 259-292.
• German Jesuits in Japan . In Japanstudien 17, 2005, pp. 83-108.
• The development of the beer industry in Japan during the Meiji period: consumption, capital and competence . In Bochumer Jahrbuch für Ostasienforschung 27, 2003, pp. 231–267.
• Home, School and the Middle Class: Paternal Narratives of Child Rearing in Fujin no tomo, 1908-1926 . In Ulrike Wöhr, Barbara Sato and Suzuki Sadami (eds.): Gender and Modernity: Rereading Japanese Women's Magazines . Kyoto: The International Research Center for Japanese Studies, 2000, pp. 69-83.
• When Japan led the world. 'The Land of Quick Marriage and Quick Divorce' 1870-1940 . In Nachrichten der Ostasiatischen Gesellschaft 171/172, 1999, pp. 75-92.
• Between severity and love - the image of the father in Japan in the early 20th century . In Werner Schaumann (ed.): Japan's culture of reforms . Tokyo: OAG, 1999, pp. 173-192.
• Overview . In Harald Fuess (Ed.): The Japanese Empire and Its Postwar Legacy . Munich: Iudicium, 1998, pp. 11-13.
• The country needs new fathers. The Manhood Crisis in Japan in the 1990s. In Japan Studies 10, 1998, pp. 405-413.
• with Hendrik Meyer-Ohle: Consumption and Services in Japan in the 1990s - Introduction . In Japanstudien 9, 1997, pp. 15-23.
• The Japanese Civil Code Reform Controversy (1996): Japanese Identity and the Role of Women . In Japan Studies 9, 1997, pp. 255-286.
• A Golden Age of Fatherhood? Parent-Child Relations in Japanese Historiography . In Monumenta Nipponica 52 (3), 1997, pp. 381-397.

Books

• Divorce in Japan: Family, Gender and the State. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004.
• The Japanese Empire and Its Postwar Legacy. Munich: Iudicium, 1998.

Web links

• Profile on the website of the Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context"
• Profile on the Center for East Asian Studies website

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.eajs.eu/index.php?id=276&L=0&L=1&tx_felogin_pi1
2. ↑ http://www.zo.uni-heidelberg.de/japanologie/institut/mitarbeiter/index.html
3. ↑ http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/fakultaeten/philosophie/zegk/histsem/lösungen/lösungen.html
4. ↑ http://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/people/person/persdetail/fuess.html