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.

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

• East Asia
• Modern
• Political Cultures
• Science and Medicine
• Transnational History

• Thinking East Asia

Authored book

• Bronson, Adam (2016). One Hundred Million Philosophers: Science of Thought and the Culture of Democracy in Postwar Japan. University of Hawaii Press.

Book review

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

Chapter in book

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

Journal Article

• Bronson, Adam (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.
• Bronson, Adam (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.
• Bronson, Adam (2008). Japanese Folklore Studies and History: Prewar and Postwar Inflections. Folklore Forum 38(1): 8-35.

Newspaper/Magazine Article

• Bronson, Adam (2021). Shinzo Abe and the Future of Japanese Democracy. Dissent (Online).