Yusaku Matsuzawa - Faculty Interview
Participant Profile
Yusaku Matsuzawa
Japanese Social HistoryGraduated from the Faculty of Letters, the University of Tokyo, in 1999. Withdrew from the Doctoral Programs in the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology at the University of Tokyo in 2002. After serving as an assistant professor at the Historiographical Institute of the University of Tokyo and an associate professor at the Faculty of Economics at Senshu University, he assumed his current position in 2014.
Yusaku Matsuzawa
Japanese Social HistoryGraduated from the Faculty of Letters, the University of Tokyo, in 1999. Withdrew from the Doctoral Programs in the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology at the University of Tokyo in 2002. After serving as an assistant professor at the Historiographical Institute of the University of Tokyo and an associate professor at the Faculty of Economics at Senshu University, he assumed his current position in 2014.
From Fragments of Daily Life to Universal Questions: Toward a Historical Grasp of Our Ever-Changing Society.
My Research Theme and How I Encountered It
I research rural society from the Edo period to the Meiji period.
I was always interested in history, but when I started university, I hadn't decided to make it my major. At the time, I was more drawn to abstract thinking, like philosophy and intellectual history. What ultimately led me to major in history was reading the works of a historian named Yoshio Yasumaru. His research is part of a field known as "history of popular thought" (minsh¨± shis¨shi), and I was fascinated by how he unearthed broad, universal questions from the concrete details of ordinary people's lives from the Edo to the Meiji periods.
The Appeal and Fascination of My Research Theme
To conduct historical research, one must read "historical materials" (shiry¨). These materials are the documents, letters, and ledgers left behind by people of the period under study. It's actually quite rare to read them and immediately find them fascinating. At first, you simply read and transcribe them over and over. Gradually, connections start to appear, and as you continue to ponder these connections, they can lead to unexpected facts and arguments. What is recorded in these historical materials are often trivial fragments of daily life, but they are tied to much broader issues. Discovering this changes how you see your own daily life. I believe that is where the appeal lies.
A Message for Students
When you study history, you realize that while human beings themselves don't seem to change all that much, the social structures they create certainly do. The modern social sciences that you study in the Faculty of Economics are like a sharp blade for dissecting the society before you, but that doesn't mean it can cut through everything. I believe one of the purposes of a university education is to free you from the pressure to "solve the immediate problem now" and to provide you with the opportunity to think about "questions that may not be right in front of you but are worth considering." I hope that you will make the most of this chance.