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Tokyo Alumni Podcast Episode 48: Japan Historian, Harvard, Yale, Researcher, Mito, Writer, Runner
Michael Thornton (ASIJ 2006)
Historian (Post Doctoral Research Associate)
Michael Thornton is a historian of early-modern and modern Japan, with a particular interest in urban history. In his dissertation, “Settling Sapporo: City and State in the Global Nineteenth Century,” he analyzed the planning and construction of Sapporo across the nineteenth century. He argued that the city was built as a settler-colonial capital, playing an instrumental role in the Japanese colonization of Hokkaido. The city was in turn heavily shaped by its colonial position and functions. More broadly, Thornton is interested in the transformation of Japanese cities between the Tokugawa and Meiji periods, including the development of new forms of social and political organization and municipal administration, with an eye to lessons that the rest of the world might learn from one of the planet’s most urbanized societies. Thornton grew up in Kobe and Tokyo before attending Yale, where he received a BA in History in 2010.
After brief stints in Germany and back in Japan he entered the Ph.D. program in History at Harvard, from which he graduated in May 2018.
Episode Summary
1:17 - Introduction
3:08 - Release of a new book about the city of Mito, Japan
8:52 - Common misconceptions people have about samurai
15:25 - Being a TCK / "Where is home?"
31:09 - "Dr. Thornton" - Settling Sapporo: City and State in the Global Nineteenth Century
43:13 - Running - (Running culture, Charles River, and Haruki Murakami, memories of ASIJ Cross Country)
58:50 - Homosexual relationships - the transition from ASIJ to the states and being a gay man in the 21st century and activism.
1:08:30 - What is coming up in Michaels life
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By Nickolas Harris
5
33 ratings
Michael Thornton (ASIJ 2006)
Historian (Post Doctoral Research Associate)
Michael Thornton is a historian of early-modern and modern Japan, with a particular interest in urban history. In his dissertation, “Settling Sapporo: City and State in the Global Nineteenth Century,” he analyzed the planning and construction of Sapporo across the nineteenth century. He argued that the city was built as a settler-colonial capital, playing an instrumental role in the Japanese colonization of Hokkaido. The city was in turn heavily shaped by its colonial position and functions. More broadly, Thornton is interested in the transformation of Japanese cities between the Tokugawa and Meiji periods, including the development of new forms of social and political organization and municipal administration, with an eye to lessons that the rest of the world might learn from one of the planet’s most urbanized societies. Thornton grew up in Kobe and Tokyo before attending Yale, where he received a BA in History in 2010.
After brief stints in Germany and back in Japan he entered the Ph.D. program in History at Harvard, from which he graduated in May 2018.
Episode Summary
1:17 - Introduction
3:08 - Release of a new book about the city of Mito, Japan
8:52 - Common misconceptions people have about samurai
15:25 - Being a TCK / "Where is home?"
31:09 - "Dr. Thornton" - Settling Sapporo: City and State in the Global Nineteenth Century
43:13 - Running - (Running culture, Charles River, and Haruki Murakami, memories of ASIJ Cross Country)
58:50 - Homosexual relationships - the transition from ASIJ to the states and being a gay man in the 21st century and activism.
1:08:30 - What is coming up in Michaels life