Hajimu Masuda

Masuda Hajimu (family name Masuda, 益田 肇) is a historian at the National University of Singapore. He is the author of Cold War Crucible: The Korean Conflict and the Postwar World (2015). His areas of concentration are the modern history of East Asia, the history of American foreign relations, and the social and global history of the Cold War, with particular attention toward ordinary people and their violence, as well as the recurrent rise of grassroots social conservatism in the globalized world of the twentieth century.

He received his PhD from Cornell University in 2012, and currently is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He was a residential fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC from September 2017 to May 2018; a Visiting Fellow at CRASSH and Wolfson College at the University of Cambridge from March to November 2020; and a Visiting Scholar at Waseda University from February to November 2020.

He is currently the Principal Investigator of the NUS-based three-year project, “Reconceptualizing the Cold War: On-the-ground Experiences in Asia,” which aims at the creation of oral history archives on the themes of the Cold War and decolonization in Asia. This project examines “social warfare” among ordinary people, including diverse social struggles, culture wars, and personal strife, as well as various ethnic and religious conflicts, often waged in the name of the Cold War.

TEACHING AREAS:

• Modern Japan: Conflict in History
• Student Movements in Asia
• Reconsidering the Cold War
• Decolonization in the 20th Century

CURRENT RESEARCH:

• The Cold War
• Decolonization
• Postwar Japan
• Social Movements
• U.S. Foreign Relations
• 20th Century Global History

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:

• Cold War Crucible: The Korean Conflict and the Postwar World (Harvard University Press, 2015)

Articles Essays, Book Chapters and Book Reviews:

• “Reconsidering U.S.-Japanese Relations History,” The Oxford Handbook of American Foreign Relations, Robert David Johnson ed. (Oxford University Press, forthcoming)
• “People’s War at Home: Toward a Global and Comparative Social History of the Cold War World,” CWIHP e-Dossier Series (Cold War International History Project, forthcoming)
• “The Cold War as a Social Mechanism: Toward an Analysis of Cold War Asia, not of the Cold War in Asia,” IIAS Newsletter 72 (forthcoming in 2015)
• Social Movements
• "Still Cozy After All These Years: Beijing's Support for Pyongyang During the Korean War Explains Why It Still Backs Kim Today," Foreign Policy, co-authored with Sergey Radchenko (June 25, 2015)
• "On the 65th Anniversary of the Korean War, It’s Worth Noting This: We Got the Meaning of the War Wrong," History News Network (HNN) (June 22, 2015)
• "The Social Politics of Imagined Realities," Harvard University Press Blog (February 12, 2015)
• “Japan,” Dictionary of American History: America in the World, Edited by Edward J. Blum et al. (Charles Scribner's Sons, 2015)
• "Gentlemen's Agreement," Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity and Nationalism, John Stone, Rutledge Dennis, Polly Rizova, Anthony D. Smith eds. (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015)
• “Kyodai dogakukai: Sengoshi ni okeru genbakuten no mou hitostu no imi [Kyoto University Student Association: Another Meaning of the A-bomb Exhibition in the Postwar Era],” Chosen no senso no jidai [The Age of the Korean War], Tessa-Morris Suzuki ed. (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2015)
• “Sex Work in Occupied Japan,” Book review of Occupying Power: Sex Workers and Servicemen in Postwar Japan by Sarah Kovner, H-Net Book Review (2014)
• "The Korean War’s Impacts on Society and Politics in Japan: Politics of Memory and the Making of Antiwar Activism" in Pierre Journoud ed., La guerre de Corée et ses enjeux stratégiques, de 1950 à nos jours The Korean War and Its Strategic Issues From 1950 to the Present
• "The History of the Korean War and the History of China’s Present," Journal of American-East Asian Relations, 19:3-4, 339-44.
• "The Korean War through the Prism of Chinese Society: Public Reactions and the Shaping of 'Reality' in the Communist State," Journal of Cold War Studies, 14:3, 3-38.
• "Fear of World War III: Social Politics of Re-armament and Peace Movements in Japan during the Korean War, 1950-53," Journal of Contemporary History, 47:3, 551-71.
• "Rumors of War: Immigration Disputes and the Social Construction of American-Japanese Relations, 1905-1913," Diplomatic History, 33:1, 1-37. (Ranked the third most downloaded article in the journal).