Hajimu Masuda
Professional affiliation
Wilson Center Projects
After the Occupation: The Rise of Grassroots Conservatism in Postwar Japan
Full Biography
Masuda Hajimu (PhD Cornell 2012) is a historian at the National University of Singapore, and the author of Cold War Crucible: The Korean Conflict and the Postwar World (Harvard University Press, 2015). His work concerns the modern history of Japan and East Asia, the history of U.S. foreign relations, and the social and global history of the Cold War. An overarching theme of his research is the evolving power of the ordinary people, regardless of any political spectrum, with particular attention to intersections between war and society and politics and culture in the mid-20th century. He is currently working on his second book on Japan’s social and grassroots experience of war and occupation, with a particular focus on the recurrent rise of grassroots conservative backlashes from the 1930s to the 1950s.
Major Publications
- Publication One: Cold War Crucible: The Korean Conflict and the Postwar World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015)
- Publication Two: "What Was the Cold War? Imagined Reality, Ordinary People’s War, and Social Mechanism," The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 15:4, No. 3 (Feb 2017)
- Publication Three: “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 (July 2012)