Dr Satona Suzuki

Born and raised in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, Japan — a region known for its history, natural beauty, and cultural traditions — and inspired by my late father, a physicist who loved history, and my late mother, who was born in Manchuria in the 1930s, I have always been fascinated by Japanese history from an early age. Wanting to understand Japan from an international perspective, I chose SOAS as the ideal place to study the country within a broader global and comparative context.

My early research examined Japanese Buddhist missionary activities in Korea before Japan’s colonisation in 1910, in the context of imperialism. Their missionary efforts were not monolithic: aims and approaches differed among Buddhist sects, with some focusing primarily on the Japanese expatriate community. Concentrating on the Jōdo Shinshū Higashi Honganji branch (True Pure Land sect), whose early objective was to create a buffer zone against Christianity, I came to recognise the multifaceted and multilayered nature of Japanese Buddhist missionary enterprise during the early phase of Japan’s imperial expansion. Working with primary sources in Japanese, Korean, and, to a lesser extent, Classical Chinese, I also rediscovered my love of reading and developed a renewed appreciation for how cultural sensitivity and nuance are essential to understanding historical contexts and perspectives across all aspects of modern Japanese history.

I integrate these skills when I teach Advanced Japanese, using current socio-political issues—such as constitutional revision, security, immigration, overtourism, gender, and the rise of AI—as key themes. As some of these debates are closely connected to Japan’s imperial legacy and the postcolonial impasses between Japan and its neighbours, I aim to connect “then” and “now” within a global framework that examines how Japan continues to define its position in the world today.

• Modern Japanese History
• Japanese imperialism
• Japanese militarism
• Modern Japanese and Korean relations
• Meiji Buddhist history