Black Transnationalism and Japan

Table of Contents Editors’ Introduction Black Transnationalism and Japan: Concepts and Contours, by Natalia Doan and Sho Konishi1. Solidarity with Samurai: The Antebellum African American Press, Transnational Racial Equality, and the 1860 Japanese Embassy to the United States, by Natalia Doan 2. From Peripheries to Transnational: African Americans in Japan’s Identity Formation, 1872–1940, by Yukiko Koshiro3. Playing Changes: Music as Mediator between Japanese and Black Americans, by E. Taylor Atkins4. Interracial Friendship across Barbed Wire: Mollie Wilson and Lillian Igasaki, by Sonia Gomez5. The Transpacific Reworking of Race and Marxist Theory: The Case of Harry Haywood’s Lifework, by Yuichiro Onishi and Toru Shinoda6. My Journey into Black/Africana Studies: Knowledge Should Be Power to Unite Us, an interview with Furukawa TetsushiBibliographyIndex'Black Transnationalism and Japan' brings to light transnational encounters that challenged hierarchies of race, culture, and imperialism.Since before the American Civil War, African American and Japanese encounters produced relationships and discourses of knowledge that transcended Eurocentric conceptions of civilization and hierarchies of personhood. 'Black Transnationalism and Japan' introduces the diverse activity and intellectual movements created, shaped, and led by Japanese and African American people. While some Pan-Asianisms and Pan-Africanisms urged a uniting of colonized spaces against the colonizer, and were often expressed in the form of decolonization movements, this volume introduces various transnational phenomena that transcended such dichotomies. Black American-Japanese transnational encounters often occurred on the non-state level from within the two new competing empires of America and Japan. Such transnational encounters reveal not only heretofore hidden historical actors, friendships, and solidarities, but also innovative cultural productions that challenged hierarchies of race, culture, and imperialism.Since before the American Civil War, African American and Japanese encounters produced relationships and discourses of knowledge that transcended Eurocentric conceptions of civilization and hierarchies of personhood. 'Black Transnationalism and Japan' introduces the diverse activity and intellectual movements created, shaped, and led by Japanese and African American people. While some Pan-Asianisms and Pan-Africanisms urged a uniting of colonized spaces against the colonizer, and were often expressed in the form of decolonization movements, this volume introduces various transnational phenomena that transcended such dichotomies. Black American-Japanese transnational encounters often occurred on the non-state level from within the two new competing empires of America and Japan. Such transnational encounters reveal not only heretofore hidden historical actors, friendships, and solidarities, but also innovative cultural productions that challenged hierarchies of race, culture, and imperialism.