The Sea Connects: Rethinking the Emergence of Modern Japan and Australia from a Pacific Ocean Perspective

Keynote speakers at JSAA2025:

Emerita Professor Tessa Morris-Suzuki of The Australian National University.

The Sea Connects: Rethinking the Emergence of Modern Japan and Australia from a Pacific Ocean Perspective

2nd October, 6:00 – 7:00, hybrid, open to the public.

In recent years, the ocean has become an increasingly visible element in the study of Japanese history. The sea, if course, is always present in the story of an archipelago like Japan; but often it has been seen either as a blank space or as a barrier separating Japan from the outside world. Now, more and more, the sea is viewed as a dynamic force in history. Drawing inspiration from this ‘oceanic turn’ in history writing, my paper explores the new light that can be shed on Japan’s past by placing it in the context of the floating empire of commercial whaling which transformed the nineteenth-century Pacific. Viewing the region’s history from the deck of the whaleship can help us to see neglected or forgotten aspects of Pacific history, and this in turn sheds new light on the emergence of modern nations including Japan and Australia. In particular, a maritime viewpoint reveals the historical connections, not just between ‘the West’ and Japan, or between Europe and Australia, but amongst the many communities of the Pacific Ocean.

Starting from the small stories of Pacific Islanders who arrived in Japan from Australia before the coming of Perry, I argue that there has been a ‘Pacific amnesia’ in our understanding of the nineteenth century histories of both Japan and Australia. From a maritime perspective, Japan was developing connections to places like Hawaii and Palau even before its 1850s ‘opening’ to the world, while seaborn connections brought Pacific Islanders from many parts of the ocean to the shores of Pre-Federation Australia. This presentation will consider some of the ways in which the oceanic perspective on the past can give us new understandings of the history of Japan and Australia, and the relationship between them.

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