Tomoko Akami: Associate Professor (Reader): School of Culture, History & Language

She is now working on her latest ARC Discovery Project, 'Towards a globalized history of international relations: a case of Japan'. It amis to question the orthodox understanding of history of IR that has been based on Euro-American experiences, by problematizing colonialism, and examining the genealogies of the knowledge of the 'International' (such as IR, International Law, International Studies), mainly focusing on experts in Japan and their interactions with their counterparts across the regions. It builds on her recent works on history of international law, as well as her collaborative works with experts of IR and International Law.

She is one of the scholars who began to regard the League of Nations as a harbinger of global governing norms for the following UN era, but she focuses on an often-neglected region, Asia in this context. Her last ARC project on 'Empire and Global Health Governance', examined the League of Nations Health Organization's operations in Asia in the inter-war period. It built on her first book on the Institute of Pacific Relations (2002), which was an historical analysis of the role of non-governmental organizations and their experts in Asia and the Pacific in the inter-war period. Through these works, she has questioned the Westphalian model of international relations as an analytical base of inter-war international politics, as well as the national-international binary in examining internationalism. Instead, she has focused on the nexus of the nation-state and empire, explored the meaning of 'liberal empire' and inter-imperial/colonial cooperations in the formations of regional/international organizations and norms.

Her earlier ARC project also resulted in the two books on Japan's news agencies in its foreign policy, 1870–1945 (2012, 2014). Both see the the development of telecommunication technology and mass-based politics and the emergence of international public opinion as three major global factors which influenced modern states' foreign policy and their institution making. The first volume deals with Japan's challenge to Reuters' news empire in Northeast Asia in 1870–1934, and questions an assumption of a sudden change of Japan's foreign policy in the early 1930s in a broader context of the development of its information policy. The second volume examines the roles of the Board of Information (1941–45) and the national/imperial news agency (Domei) in the making of Japan's total war state/emire in 1934–45. It questions the often assumed nature of the political regime of Japan in this war period, by showing these two organizations' activities not in the area of domestic thought control, but in the area of news propaganda and intelligence gathering and assessment for foreign policy.

Exactly twenty years after the first undersea cable was laid across the English Channel in 1851, the last leg of the north- and south- bound cable networks reached Japan via Shanghai, connecting all the continents, except for the Antarctic. This age of global telecommunications coincided with two moves by the major empires in the late nineteenth century: their aggressive colonization in Africa, Asia and the Pacific; and the expansion of the franchise at their metropolitan centres. Overseas news was conveyed more quickly, and affected more people's views of the world. As metropolitan states gradually expanded their franchise bases, these peoples' views (the public opinion) were becoming an important factor not only in domestic politics, but also in foreign policies. The states had to respond to these developments of technology and mass-based politics, realize the power of news, and come to see the need to develop policy and institutions to utilize news in foreign policy. As soon as global telecommunication networks were established, three major news agencies - British Reuters, French Havas, and German Wolff - created an interimperial news cartel system in 1870, and Northeast Asia came under Reuters' news empire. Using the notion of 'news propaganda', this book analyses how the Meiji state came into the inter-imperial news system, and how it became aware of the problem of Reuters'news empire in Northeast Asia. It also examines how the Japanese state began to develop the governmental institutions and a key operational agency, the national news agency, to utilize news propaganda in international politics, and how it challenged Reuters' news agency in the region with a help of American Associated Press. The book demonstrates the modern thinking of foreign policy elites, including high- to middle-ranking diplomats, military officers and news agency men. They were well attuned with global trends, technological development, and the rising significance 'international public opinion'. They responded not with isolationism from, but with greater engagement with the world public in the time of diplomatic crises and international conflicts. Their challenge to Reuters' news empire was not a structural challenge to the inter-imperial news system, but a quest for Japan's greater power in that system, and closely connected to the military expansion into China. CONTENTS Introduction Ch. 1: The Old Order: Reuters' News Empire in Northeast Asia Ch. 2: Japan's Early News Propaganda, 1870s-1900s Ch. 3: News Propaganda as a Foreign Policy; The Creation of Japan's Own News Propaganda Organizations, 1909-14 Ch. 4: The New Paradigm of International Politics Wartime News Propaganda and International Public Opinion, 1914-20 Ch. 5: Japan's Response to the New Paradigm, 1918-23 Ch. 6: Iwanaga's Vision for a National News Agency and the State's Response To Wireless, 1923-5 Ch. 7: The Formation of Rengō and its Challenge to the Monopoly of Reuters' News Empire in China, 1926-9 Ch. 8: News Propaganda and Mass-Based Politics during the Manchurian Crisis, 1931-3: the Beginning of the State's Coordination Ch. 9: The End of the Old Order of Reuters' News Empire in Northeast Asia and Rengō's Overseas Expansion, 1932-5 Ch. 10:1933-5: The Dawn of a New Era of News Propaganda Conclusion Archival Sources Bibliography About the Author Tomoko Akami was born in Tottori, Japan. She received an MA at Hiroshima, a second MA at Melbourne, and a PhD at the Australian National University. She now teaches and does research at the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. Her publications include Internationalizing the Pacific (2002), and she has published on the idea of the Pacific Community in the 1920s, non-governmental organizations in Asia and the Pacific, comparative liberalism, and the nexus of the nation-state and empire.