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Please see below for information about the eighth session of the 2024-2025 Enemy Encounters in East Asia webinar series of the Research Training Group "Ambivalent Enmity: Dynamics of Antagonism in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East” at Heidelberg University and the Heidelberg University of Jewish Studies, Germany.

Title: “倭寇 `Japanese Pirates’ in East Asia: Infamous Seafarers in History and Memory”

Speaker: Travis Shutz (Assistant Professor, California State University)

Time and Date: May 15, 2025, 4:00 PM (Heidelberg, CEST) via ZOOM.

The webinar will be recorded, but not the question time. If you would like to attend the webinars, please contact barend.noordam@hcts.uni-heidelberg.de.

In this session, Travis Shutz (Assistant Professor, California State University) will share his thoughts on the Wokou `Japanese pirates’ in East Asian history and memory:

Haunting national histories and popular memories around East Asia, the so-called “Japanese pirates” (Chinese: Wōkòu, Japanese: Wakō, Korean: Waegu) of the early modern period have complex legacies. This webinar explores how multiethnic, transnational seagoers came to be identified as infamous Japanese seaborne brigands. First, it presents the historical waves of their activity, the Early Wakō of the late 13th century to the early 15th century and the Later Wakō who operated in the 16th and 17th centuries. Second, the discussion examines how these groups were understood in their own times and later used for both criticizing and supporting Japanese imperial activities in the long 20th century.

BACKGROUND

For more information about the Research Training Group "Ambivalent Enmity: Dynamics of Antagonism in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East”, please go to our website https://ambivalentenmity.org/.

This project has received funding from the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG).