Harald Meyer

Harald Meyer (born January 29, 1972 in Zurich , Switzerland ) is a Swiss Japanologist , literary scholar and historian of ideas .

After studying Japanese Studies, Sinology and Modern History at the Universities of Zurich and Kanazawa , Meyer received his doctorate in 2000 under Eduard Klopfenstein in Zurich on modern historical narration in Japan . From 1998 to 2000 he was an assistant, from 2002 to 2008 senior assistant at the East Asian Department of the University of Zurich. In 2004 he completed his habilitation with a thesis on the conceptual history of the reception of democracy in Japan in the early 20th century ( Taishō democracy ). Teaching positions took him to the Universities of Kanazawa, Heidelberg , Tübingen and St. Gallen . In 2007/2008 he was a substitute professor at the Japanese Studies department at the University of Bonn . In 2008, he turned down an offer for the professorship for “Japanese History of Culture and Ideas” at the University of Frankfurt . Since June 2008 he has been professor for “Contemporary Japanese Studies” at the University of Bonn.

Meyer's research interests include modern and contemporary Japanese literature . He organized and moderated readings and workshops with Japanese authors such as Risa Wataya , Hiromi Itō and Masatsugu Ono . With his monograph Literature Museums as Stations in Japanese Literary History, published in 2015 , he presented the first German-language overview of Japanese literary museums. The manual can also be read as a contribution to the literary history of Japanese modernism. The volume The Great Tsunami of the Sanriku Coast , published in 2013, presents Akira Yoshimura's documentary literature on historical tsunami , which attracted great attention in Japan after the triple disaster of March 11, 2011 . The translations of Yoshimura's work are supplemented by personal accounts of Meyer's encounters with the author and his wife, the writer Setsuko Tsumura . In the monograph Japans Bestseller-König , published in 2010, Meyer analyzes the great success of Ryōtarō Shiba's works with the Japanese readership according to narratological and aesthetic criteria.

Fonts (selection)

• Fiction versus Reality: The Modern Historical Narrative in Japan. Model of a genre theory and typology for rekishi shōsetsu . (= Swiss Asian Studies / Études asiatique suisse Monographien / monographes. Vol. 35). Peter Lang, Bern / Berlin / Bruxelles / Frankfurt am Main / New York / Oxford / Vienna 2000, ISBN 978-3-906765-37-2 .
• (Ed.) The image of Switzerland in Japan: Forms of reception in the 20th century . (= Asian Studies / Études Asiatiques. LVIII • 2 • 2004). Peter Lang, Bern / Berlin / Bruxelles / Frankfurt am Main / New York / Oxford / Vienna 2004.
• The «Taishō Democracy». Conceptual historical studies on the reception of democracy in Japan from 1900 to 1920 . (= Welten Ostasiens / Worlds of East Asia / Mondes de l'Extrême-Orient. Vol. 4). Peter Lang, Bern / Berlin / Bruxelles / Frankfurt am Main / New York / Oxford / Vienna 2005, ISBN 978-3-03910-642-4 .
• (Ed.) Ways of Japanology. Festschrift for Eduard Klopfenstein . (= Japanology. Vol. 1). LIT Verlag, Münster / Hamburg / Berlin / Vienna / London 2008, ISBN 978-3-8258-0541-8 .
• Japan's bestseller king. A narratological and aesthetic success analysis of the Shiba Ryōtarō phenomenon (1923–1996) . (= ERGA. Erfurt series on the history of Asia. Volume 10). Iudicium, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-86205-210-3 .
• (Ed.) Lecture manuscripts and translations on premodern Japanese literature by Herbert Zachert (1908–1979) . (= OAG-Taschenbuch. No. 95). Iudicium, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-86205-107-6 .
• (Ed. With Takahiro Nishiyama & Reinhard Zöllner) Media, Cultures, Identities. Aspects of Contents Business in East Asia . Iudicium, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-86205-308-7 .
• (Ed. & Transl.) «The great tsunami of the Sanriku coast»: Documentary literature by Yoshimura Akira (1927-2006) . (= ERGA. Series on the history of Asia. Volume 11). Iudicium, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-86205-211-0 .
• (Ed.) Conceptual histories from East Asian studies: case studies on the coining of concepts in Japanese, Chinese and Korean . (= ERGA. Series on the history of Asia. Volume 12). Iudicium, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-86205-212-7 .
• Literature museums as stations in the literary history of Japan. A journey through Japanese modernity . (= ERGA. Series on the history of Asia. Volume 14). Iudicium, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-86205-214-1 .
• (Ed. With Matthias Koch, Nishiyama Takahiro & Reinhard Zöllner) Media-Contents and Disasters. Contributions to the media processing of the Great East Japanese Earthquake Disaster . Iudicium, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-86205-299-8 .
• (Ed. With Hellmut Gray & Daniel Gerichhausen) Lebrecht Graus Japan years in words and pictures . (ハラルド·マイヤー,ヘルムート·グラウ,ダニエル·ゲーリッヒハウゼン編)レープレヒト·グラウの手記と写真が伝える日本. Munich: Iudicium, 2017 (= ERGA. Series on the History of Asia, Volume 15), ISBN 978-3-86205-215-8 .
• (Ed. With 西山 崇 宏 Nishiyama Takahiro & 伊藤 守 Itō Mamoru) ド イ ツ と の 対 話 —— 〈３ ・ １１〉 以降 の 社会 と 文化Dialogue with Germany - society and culture after the Great East Japanese earthquake on March 11, 2011 . Tōkyō: Serika shobō, 2018, ISBN 978-4-7967-0372-7 .
• (Ed. With Christine Schirrmacher & Ulrich Vollmer) The Bonn Orient and Asian Studies: A story in 22 portraits . Großheirath: OSTASIEN Verlag, 2018 (= ORIENTIERUNGEN topic volume), ISBN 978-3-946114-46-8 .
• Literary foray through Kanazawa. Great writers in Japan pay homage to a city . Munich: Iudicium, 2018 (= ERGA. Series on the History of Asia, Volume 16), ISBN 978-3-86205-217-2 .
• The Life and Death of Ogura Shohei (1846-1877). The Battle of a Samurai Intellectual in the Early Meiji Era . Munich: Iudicium, 2018 (= ERGA. Series on the history of Asia, Volume 17), ISBN 978-3-86205-218-9 .
• (Ed. With Reinhard Zöllner) The Trautz Collection. Visual treasures from the estate of the Japanese scholar Friedrich M. Trautz (1877-1952) . With the collaboration of Daniel Gerichhausen, Hendrik Groth and Paul Schoppe. Munich: Iudicium, 2019 (= series: ERGA. Series on the history of Asia, Volume 18), ISBN 978-3-86205-219-6 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Harald Meyer in the catalog of the German National Library
• Employee page at the University of Bonn with curriculum vitae and list of publications

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Asahi.com ( Memento from May 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (Japanese)