Dr Shigeru Sato

Japanese Empire and the People of Southeast Asia

“Japanese Imperialism and the People of Southeast Asia” is the title of Sato’s new book manuscript. His article 'French Colonialism, Japanese Imperialism and the Great Vietnamese Famine' is forthcoming from the Cambridge journal of Modern Asian Studies. He is affiliated with the Centre for the History of Violence at the University of Newcastle, and has researched socioeconomic impact of World War II in Java, British and Dutch Borneo, Eastern Indonesia, and French Indochina. He has contributed to End of Empire: One Hundred Days in 1945 that Changed Asia and the World”, Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2016. In 2014, he was a guest speaker three times at the Northeast Asian History Foundation, Seoul, and discussed war and colonialism in East and Southeast Asia. Earlier, he was a guest lecturer in the Summer Institute of the East-West Center, the University of Hawaii, and a visiting research fellow at the International Institute of Asian Studies in Leiden (twice), the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, NIOD Institute of War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam (twice), and the Australian National Library in Canberra. He has authored War, Nationalism and Peasants: Java under the Japanese Occupation 1942-1945, edited The Encyclopedia of Indonesia in the Pacific War, and contributed to World War II in Asia and the Pacific and the War’s Aftermath, with General Themes, and many other books and refereed journals.

Research Expertise
World War II in Asia. Japanese expansionism and its social and economic impact on other Asian countries, particularly Indonesia, French Indochina and British Borneo. Forced prostitution for the Japanese armed forces during WWII. Wartime labour mobilisation. The economic policies by the Dutch colonial authorities before the Japanese invasion, 1939-1942. Japanese language teaching in the Japanese-occupied Asian territories. Daily life in wartime Indonesia, 1939-1949.

Teaching Expertise
Japanese language teaching from the introductory level to the master's level. Japanese history. Transformation of Japanese society as reflected in fiction and statistics. Origin of the Japanese people (their pre-historic migratory patterns and the relationships with the peoples in the other parts of the world, based on genetic, archaeological, and linguistic evidence.) Japanese literature, particularly fiction and poetry, both classical and modern.

Administrative Expertise
I have acted as Student Academic Conduct Officer, the Japanese section representative, research officer, and library liaison officer.

Collaborations
Currently Sato has collaborated with international scholars to launch the project, “End of Empire: One Hundred Days in 1945 that Changed Asia and the World”, which is managed by NIAS Press based in Copenhagen. Many of his earlier publications, such as "The Encyclopedia of Indonesia in the Pacific War" and "Sex, Power, and Slavery" have also resulted from extensive international collaborations with scholars who hail from all the five continents. He has also collaborated with the East-West Center, The University of Hawaii, and the Northeast Asian History Foundation in Seoul, in teacher training and international symposia.