Staff profile

I am an historian of modern Japan interested in the relationship between the transnational circulation of ideas and local intellectual and political practices. My first book, One Hundred Million Philosophers (Hawaii, 2016), explored this topic through the trajectory of democratic intellectual and social movements after World War II. I have since published work on the history of practical criticism and haiku, sociological theory and wartime rumours, and the opinion poll in postwar political culture.

I am currently working on a project that explores the history of public opinion in Japan through problems of translation, circulation, quantification and leadership. This project builds on my long-standing interest in comparative history and historical comparisons. I organised a conference on this topic that took place in May 2019.

I would be happy to consider supervising postgraduate projects that relate to modern intellectual, cultural, and/or political history.

• Cultures of quantification
• Global and comparative history
• Intellectual history
• Japanese history; 19th and 20th centuries
• Public opinion
• Translation and political thought

Authored book

• Bronson, A. (2016). One Hundred Million Philosophers: Science of Thought and the Culture of Democracy in Postwar Japan. University of Hawaii Press. https://doi.org/10.21313/hawaii/9780824855338.001.0001

Book review

• Bronson, A. (2023). Tenko: Cultures of Political Conversion in Transwar Japan edited by Irena Hayter, George T. Sipos and Mark Williams. The journal of Japanese studies, 49(1), 192-196. https://doi.org/10.1353/jjs.2023.0018
• Bronson, A. (2019). Ennobling Japan's Savage Northeast: Tōhoku as Postwar Thought, 1945–2011 by Nathan Hopson. The journal of Japanese studies, 45(2), 381-385. https://doi.org/10.1353/jjs.2019.0041
• Bronson, A. (2018). Monster of the twentieth century: Kōtoku Shūsui and Japan’s first anti-imperialist movement by Robert Thomas Tierney. Global Intellectual History, 4(4), https://doi.org/10.1080/23801883.2018.1484580

Chapter in book

• Bronson, A. (2023). Arguing with Public Opinion: Polls and Postwar Democracy. In S. Avenell (Ed.), Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History: A Handbook (47-64). Japan Documents / Amsterdam University Press
• Bronson, A. (2012). Kyōkai no kōbō: senzen no Yanagita ni yoru rekishigaku minzokugaku hihan to sengo minzokugaku. In R. Morse, & A. Norio (Eds.), Sekai no naka no Yanagita Kunio = Yanagita Kunio studies around the world (47-82). Fujiwara Shoten

Journal Article

• Bronson, A. (2022). War and the latent public: Shimizu Ikutaro on rumours and public opinion in transwar Japan, 1937-1960. Global Intellectual History, 7(1), 65-83. https://doi.org/10.1080/23801883.2020.1816840
• Bronson, A. (2021). Secondary Art and the Two-Story House: Kuwabara Takeo and the Comparative Imagination in Midcentury Japan, 1935-1947. Modern Intellectual History, 18(2), 451-473. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1479244320000013
• Bronson, A. (2008). Japanese Folklore Studies and History: Prewar and Postwar Inflections

Other (Print)

• Bronson, A. (2021). Shinzo Abe and the Future of Japanese Democracy