What role did Koreans in Japan play in the discourse on Japan’s colonial and East Asian policies when exchanging views with Japanese intellectuals of Protestant faith? Drawing on a wide range of Japanese and Korean sources, this 2024 publication examines how these actors negotiated Japanese colonial rule in Korea and the “Korean question” in relation to regional and global contexts and how their ideas influenced Korea’s reform and independence movement.

Dr. Dolf-Alexander Neuhaus is a senior research fellow at the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ) in Tokyo, where he works in the research field “Japan in transregional perspective”. Before he worked as a research assistant at the Institute of Japanese Studies at Free University and at the Korean Studies program at Goethe University Frankfurt. When pursuing his PhD, he received scholarships from the DAAD and TIFO and realized several research stays at the universities of Tokyo, Tsukuba and Yonsei (Seoul). His research interest covers modern Asian and global history.

This episode is hosted by AREA Ruhr member Dr. Anke Scherer (Ruhr University Bochum, Department of Japanese History). The talk took place on 25 June 2025.