This volume contains nine research papers presented at a joint Japanese–French workshop on the theme of “Local History in the Context of Global History”. The workshop was held at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon in October 2011 as one of the events organized at the biennial international Todai Forum under the auspices of the University of Tokyo. As Haneda Masashi explains in the preface to the volume, the aim of the workshop was to rethink our understanding of world history in terms of the coming together of originally separate regions around the world, politically, economically and culturally. This new perspective stresses the commonality of local and national histories and examines their interconnectedness fully respecting their uniqueness. The papers in the present publication share the vision of developing a new discursive narrative that perceives the world as one and constructs local histories against the backdrop of global history.

After an introductory commentary by Christian Henriot, “Paving the Way”, which expounds the de-centred, dynamic and open view of history embraced by all contributors, the volume is neatly divided into three parts. Part I, “Translation and Cross-Cultural Scientific Communication”, explores the processes that underlay the circulation and diffusion of discourses, concepts and knowledge in different regions of the world and in different historical periods. Part II, “Museums, Image and Identity Construction”, discusses various interrelated issues concerning the images of the self and the other as portrayed through art and photographic collections. Part III, “Religions, Ideology and Gender”, examines the position of women in colonial Indochina and contemporary Malaysia and the disposition of Japanese historians towards the notion of social history.

In the opening essay, “Conflicts and Interactions in Early Modern Chinese Scientific Translations”, Meng Ji offers a historical linguistic investigation of the introduction, assimilation and appropriation in early modern Chinese language and culture of the western key term nation in its modern sense of “nation state”. The study covers five decades: 1840–1850, 1860–1870, 1880–1890, 1900–1910 and 1910–1920. Her findings show that during the 1840–1850 decade the term nation was translated from English, French, Dutch, German and Italian mostly by words denoting the ethnic composition of a nation (zhonglei, zulei, yizu, zuzhong), while the word guomin, which referred to the people representing a sovereign state, was significantly less frequent. But in the subsequent decades this pattern changed. The most frequent equivalents of nation became guo and bang, which denoted a geopolitical entity. Less frequent were the words used to refer to the people of a given country (min and guomin).

In “Gravity of Modernity: Reactions to the ‘New Astronomy’ in Iran and Japan”, Yoichi Isahaya investigates the similarities between the first translations of European works in Persian and Japanese. These disseminated the principles of the new astronomy at the turn of the nineteenth century. As Isahaya explains, the new astronomy undermined the dominant principles of Aristotelian natural physics and posited, on the basis of ample empirical evidence, that the planets, including the earth, have elliptical, rather than circular orbits. Translations were similar as regards the contents, the timing, the authors, the translators' professional background and the attitudes towards European astronomy. This was acknowledged as lying outside the Iranian and Japanese astronomical traditions.

“A Study on the Geographical Understanding of Ḥamd-Allāh Mustawfī”, by Osamu Otsuka, analyses Nuzhat al-Qulūb, the much admired Persian cosmographical and encyclopaedic work written by Ḥamd-Allāh Mustawfī in the mid-fourteenth century. The significance of this scientific piece lies in its representation of the geographical understanding of the world at the time. Placed at the centre of the world, Iran was described as the best region of all of the lands and quarters and cities and districts. In line with this overall stance, the description of neighbouring countries was influenced by their relationship with Persian kings. So, six Chinese cities, whose founders were said to have been ancient Persian kings, were described using Persian anecdotes rather than Chinese ones. As for the eastern and western countries that did not have any relationship with Persia, Mustawfī provided very general information such as the name, exact location, size and religion.

Part II opens with Atsuko Ukai's paper on “The History of Japonisme as a Global Study”. Ukai first discusses the development of Japonisme studies undertaken in particular by French and Japanese researchers from the 1870s to date. She then examines one example of Japonisme artwork, Félix Bracquemond's Service Rousseau, and one example of Japonisme craftwork, Nancy Book Bindings. On the basis of these case studies, she suggests that Japonisme, which was constructed in terms of the influence of Japanese art on Western art, be reframed as Asianism. Also, the author recommends that craftworks believed to have been produced under the influence of Japanese art be reconsidered as a novel form of cultural fusion between French and Japanese craftsmanship.

In “Exhibitions of Art in Iran and the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art”, Yuki Terada offers a novel analysis of the development of the international and Iranian collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Teheran (TMoCA ) from the 1960s to the post-Islamic Revolution period. She adopts a global approach to the study of museums and questions the traditional dichotomy between the West and Islam. This has characterized the study of the TMoCA's collection up until now. Terada argues convincingly that the TMoCA is an encyclopaedic museum that represents global history, hence it belongs to the world. Lee Ju-Ling's study on the topic of “Constructing an Imagery of Taiwanese Aborigenese through Postcards (1895–1945)” offers an analysis of how the representation of female nudity on postcards constructed the image of Formosa as a timeless native island, created the imaginary of Taiwanese aborigines as the Other and emphasized Japan's status as a civilized colonizer.

The opening paper of Part III is Ayumi Mitsunari's study on “Marriage and Conversion as a National Issue: The Discourses over Lina Joy's Litigation in Contemporary Malaysia”. Mitsunari undertakes a critical analysis of the dichotomous discourses concerning the litigation of a Malay woman born to Malay Muslim parents, who was baptized and applied to have her conversion registered so that she could marry a Christian man. Lina Joy's personal case attracted much attention both in Malaysia and abroad. A coalition composed of non-Muslim organizations, human rights lawyers and various women's bodies supported Lina Joy's plea on constitutional grounds and engendered discourses centring on the freedom of religion. Instead, Muslim NGOs criticized what they perceived as attempts to limit the status of Islam in the Constitution and the judicial system of Malaysia. Chikara Uchida's paper, “I Am Not a Social Historian: The Use of the Term ‘Social History’ in Postwar Japan”, first introduces the concept of social history as it was construed by the French Annales School. It then examines how this concept was conceived by the community of historians in Japan. Finally, it demonstrates how scholars combined the two definitions to create a global history of historiography.

This volume ends with a paper by Isabelle Tracol-Huynh on “Prostitutes, Brothels and the Red Light District: The Management of Prostitution in the City of Hanoi from the 1870s to the 1950s”. Starting from the premise that the management of prostitution in Hanoi is at the crossroads between global and local history, the author analyses the local adaptations of the French regulatory system by using colonial archives such as police and medical reports as well as juridical texts. To conclude, the distinctive merit of this variegated collection of papers is that each essay examines historical processes in terms of shifts and nodes across space and time from a different disciplinary perspective. In so doing, the authors have sought to engage in a reciprocal dialogue that aims to explore new pathways in the study of historical phenomena.