Mark Ravina

Mark Ravina specialises in Japanese history, with a particular focus on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century politics. His broader methodological interests lie in the transnational and international dimensions of state-building. His third book, To Stand with the Nations of the World: Japan’s Meiji Restoration as World History, was published in 2017 by Oxford University Press and was awarded the Best Book Prize by the Southeast Conference of the Association for Asian Studies. Since 2023, he has served as Director of the UT Institute for Historical Studies.

His current research and teaching place particular emphasis on the digital humanities. His study on digital mapping and the history of cartography was recently published in the Journal of Cultural Analytics. He also serves as co-Principal Investigator for JapanLab, a research-teaching initiative dedicated to creating digital content for Japanese Studies. During the spring 2023 semester, his undergraduate team worked on digitising a Japanese board game (sugoroku, 双六) from 1938, which depicts the invasion of China (Shina jihen, 支那事変). Their challenge was to convey the influence of commercial propaganda without endorsing it.

In the realm of public scholarship, he recently completed a 12-part audio-video course, The Rise of Modern Japan, for Wondrium, following his earlier 24-part course, Understanding Japan, co-produced with the Smithsonian Institution.

The project

Title: Technology and Early Industry in Japan, 1800-1885

"The J-InnovaTech research project aims to break new ground in our understanding of Japan’s first industrialisation and to revise the prevailing consensus on how a relatively isolated agrarian economy transformed into a globally significant industrial power in just five decades. Funded by the European Research Council under the Horizon 2020 programme, the J-InnovaTech team focuses on Japan’s technological culture between 1800 and 1885 – a period recognised as crucial to the country’s development but still insufficiently studied from an empirical perspective.

Drawing on approaches from the history of technology and employing new research tools, the project highlights the diversity of innovation mechanisms and seeks to establish a new consensus on the nature of Japan’s early industrial transformation. Understanding the various pathways through which major innovations emerge enhances society’s ability to remain at the forefront of innovation.Beyond the study of early Japanese industry, the ambition of the project is to bring historical expertise to bear on the broader understanding of how innovation originates. Challenging the so-called ‘Eureka model’, the project presents examples that counter the idea of innovation as the product of a solitary genius or a sudden moment of inspiration, and that disentangle the notions of disruption and innovation.

Through examples drawn from the recent industrial past, J-InnovaTech offers insights into how technological change is often incremental, collective, collaborative, and initially slow — before accelerating — while being no less transformative in the long term."

Hosting institution: Centre de Recherche sur le Japon (CRJ)

Selective Bibliography

• To Stand with the Nations of the World: Japan’s Meiji Restoration as World History, Oxford University Press, 2017.
• "Born-Digital Maps and the Political Geography of Early-modern Japan" Journal of Cultural Analytics, vol. 8 issue 3, 2023
• "The Meiji Restoration." In The New Cambridge History of Japan: Volume 2: Early Modern Japan in Asia and the World, c. 1580–1877, edited by David L. Howell, 184-225. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.
• "Jūkyū seiki no kakumei to shite no Meiji Ishin: Napoleon no imēji to nashionarizumu no mujun 一九世紀の革命としての明治維新　―　ナポレオンのイメージとナショナリズムの矛盾." In Meijishi kōgi: Gurobaru kenkyūhen 明治史講義【グローバル研究篇】, 34-49. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 2022.