Joshua Fogel


Joshua A. Fogel is an American-Canadian Sinologist, historian, and translator who specializes in the history of modern China, especially focusing on the cultural and political relations between China and Japan. Before retiring and becoming professor emeritus in 2024, he held a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair at York University in Toronto from 2005. Before that he taught at Harvard University and the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
In June 2024 he was honored with a Festschrift, presented to him at Heidelberg University, to which twenty-seven colleagues, former students, and friends contributed.

Biography

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Fogel graduated from Berkeley High School in 1968, after becoming bar mitzvah at Congregation Beth Israel in 1963 and winning the Berkeley yoyo championship in early 1965. His father, David Fogel, was a criminologist and his mother, Muriel Fogel, was a homemaker and later a teacher in the Head Start Program in Chicago's inner city. He received his undergraduate education in Chinese history at the University of Chicago, graduating in 1972 with honors. He earned Masters and PhD degrees at Columbia University under C. Martin Wilbur and Wm. Theodore de Bary; during this period, he also did research at Kyoto University for eighteen months where he studied with Takeuchi Minoru. He has published extensively in the field of Sino-Japanese relations, and maintains a lively interest in the field of translation, as well as amateur interest in Talmud.
He has been the recipient of grants from the Fulbright Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Japanese Ministry of Education, the Japan Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. He has held a number of visiting professorships, including one year at the Research Institute in the Humanities of Kyoto University and the two-year Mellon Visiting Professor in East Asian History at the School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He was a visiting scholar at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. Since 2010, he has been an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Research Centre for Translation, Chinese University of Hong Kong.
He is the founding editor of the journal Sino-Japanese Studies . In addition, he serves on the boards of a number of publication series and journals, such as the Journal of the History of Ideas and The Journal of Chinese History.

Major publications

  • A Friend in Deed: Lu Xun, Uchiyama Kanzō, and the Intellectual World of Shanghai on the Eve of War.
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  • '. Russian translation: Anna Shlashkova, Первое плавание: путешествие «Сэндзаймару» и возникновение современных японо-китайских отношений .
  • '.
  • Articulating the Sinosphere: Sino-Japanese Relations in Space and Time. Harvard University Reischauer Lectures.
  • The Literature of Travel in the Japanese Rediscovery of China, 1862-1945.
  • The Cultural Dimension of Sino-Japanese Relations: Essays on the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.
  • '. Japanese translation: Sakatani Yoshinao 阪谷芳直, Nakae Ushikichi to Chūgoku, ichi hyūmanisuto no sei to gakumon 中江丑吉と中国、ヒューマニストの生と学問 . Chinese translation: Deng Weiquan 邓伟权 and Ishii Tomoaki 石井知章, Zhongjiang Chouji zai Zhongguo 中江丑吉在中国 .
  • Ai Ssu-ch'i's Contribution to the Development of Chinese Marxism.
  • Politics and Sinology: The Case of Naitō Konan . Japanese translation: Inoue Hiromasa 井上裕正, Naitō Konan, poritikkusu to shinorojii 内藤湖南、ポリティックスとシノロジー ; Chinese translation: Tao Demin 陶德民 and He Yingying 何英莺, Neiteng Hunan, zhengzhi yu Hanxue 内藤湖南，政治与汉学.
  • Abstinence and Holiness, Embracing Self-Deprivation: Reading Tractate Nazir in the Babylonian Talmud.
  • The Whole Megilla: Reading the Tractate on the Scroll of Esther in the Babylonian Talmud.
  • Grains of Truth: Reading Tractate Menachot of the Babylonian Talmud.
  • Left at the Altar: Reading Tractate Zevachim of the Babylonian Talmud.
  • Decisions, Decisions, Decisions: Reading Tractate Horayot of the Babylonian Talmud.
  • Daily Reflections on Idolatry: Reading Tractate Avodah Zarah of the Babylonian Talmud.
Edited volumes:
  • Modern Japanese Art and China. Coeditor with Tamaki Maeda.
  • Time and Language: New Sinology and Chinese History. Co-editor with Ori Sela and Zvi Ben-dor Benite.
  • '. Co-editor with Matthew Fraleigh.
  • '. Co-editor with Timothy Cheek and David Ownby.
  • . Editor.
  • . Co-editor with Kalman Weiser.
  • Writing Histories in Japan: Texts and Their Transformations from Ancient Times through the Meiji Era. Co-editor with James Baxter.
  • Crossing the Yellow Sea: Sino-Japanese Cultural Contacts, 1600-1950. Editor.
  • Traditions of East Asian Travel. Editor.
  • The Teleology of the Modern Nation-State: Japan and China. Editor.
  • The Role of Japan in Liang Qichao's Introduction of Modern Western Civilization to China. Editor.
  • Late Qing China and Meiji Japan: Political and Cultural Aspects of Their Interactions. Editor.
  • Historiography and Japanese Consciousness of Values and Norms. Co-editor with James Baxter.
  • Sagacious Monks and Bloodthirsty Warriors: Chinese Views of Japan in the Ming-Qing Period. Editor.
  • Encyclopedia of World History. Associate editor.
  • The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography. Japanese translation: Okada Ryōnosuke 岡田良之助, Rekishi no naka no Nankin dai gyakusatsu 歴史のなかの南京大虐殺. Editor.
  • Imagining the People: Chinese Intellectuals and the Concept of Citizenship, 1890-1920. Co-editor with Peter Zarrow.
  • Japanese Travelogues of China in the 1920s: The Accounts of Akutagawa Ryūnosuke and Tanizaki Jun'ichirō. Editor.
  • Meeting of Minds: Intellectual and Religious Interaction in East Asian Traditions of Thought. Co-editor with Irene Bloom.
  • ', by Ono Kazuko. Editor/translator.
  • Perspectives on a Changing China: Essays in Honor of Professor C. Martin Wilbur on the Occasion of His Retirement. Co-editor with William T. Rowe.
And, thirty-eight volumes of translation from Chinese, Japanese, and Yiddish, including the following:
  • Lu Xun. Translation of Ro Jun 魯迅 by Takeuchi Yoshimi 竹内好.
  • Vietnam: On the Eve of “Prosperity”. Translation of Vetonamu: “Yutakasa” e no yoake ヴェトナム : 「豊かさ」への夜明け by Tsuboi Yoshiharu 坪井喜明.
  • The Last Embassy to Tang China. Translation of Saigo no ken-Tōshi 最後の遣唐使 by Saeki Arikiyo 佐伯有清.
  • Literature and History in the Shi ji of Sima Qian. Translation of writings by Miyazaki Ichisada 宮崎市定 on the Shi ji 史記.
  • How the Red Star Rose: Edgar Snow and Early Images of Mao Zedong . Translation of Akai hoshi wa ika ni shite nobotta ka? Shirarezaru Mō Takutō no shoki imēji 赤い星は如何にして昇ったか：知られざる毛沢東の初期イメージ by Ishikawa Yoshihiro 石川禎浩.
  • New Russia: Images from a Journey. Translation of Nay-Rusland: Bilder fun a rayze נײַ-רוסלאַנד: בילדער פֿון אַ רײַזע by Israel Joshua Singer ישראל-יהושע זינגער, in Israel Joshua Singer: Collected Stories, Novellas, and Selected Reportage, 833-1053.
  • '. Translation of Vili װילי by I. J. Singer.
  • Treatise on the People of Wa in the Chronicle of the Kingdom of Wei: The World's Earliest Written Text on Japan. Translation of Gishi Wajinden o yomu 魏志倭人伝を読む by Saeki Arikiyo 佐伯有清.
  • Leksikon fun der nayer yidisher literatur לעקסיקאָן פֿון דער נײַער ייִדישער ליטעראַטור, vol. 1, vol. 2, vol. 3, vol. 4, vol. 5, vol. 6, vol. 7, and vol. 8. Online at yleksikon.blogspot.com.
  • Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers לעקסיקאָן פֿון ייִדישע שרײַבערס, comp. Berl Kagan. Online at yleksikon.blogspot.com
  • Leksikon fun yidishe shrayber in ratn-farband לעקסיקאָן פֿון יִידישע שרײַבער אין ראַטן־פֿאַרבאַנד by Chaim Beider, ed. Boris Sandler and Gennady Estraikh. Online at yleksikon.blogspot.ca
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  • '. Translations of essays by Shimada Kenji 島田虔次.
  • . Translation of Bijing shi shusheng 毕竟是书生 by Zhou Yiliang 周一良.
  • '. Translation of Chūgoku Kyōsantō seiritsu shi 中国共産党成立史 by Ishikawa Yoshihiro 石川禎浩.
  • '. Translation of Mato Shanhai: Nihon chishikijin no 'kindai' taiken 魔都上海、日本知識人の「近代」体験 by Liu Jianhui 劉建輝.
  • '. Translation of Edo jidai no Nit-Chū hiwa 江戶時代の日中秘話 by Ōba Osamu 大庭脩.
  • '. Translation of Aoki ōkami 蒼き狼 by Inoue Yasushi 井上靖.
  • '. Translation of Dattan shippūroku 韃靼疾風錄 by Shiba Ryōtarō 司馬遼太郎.
  • '. Translation of Kimera: Manshūkoku no shōzō キメラ、満洲国の肖像 by Yamamuro Shin'ichi 山室信一.
  • '. Translation of Man-Mō yūki 満蒙遊記 by Yosano Akiko 与謝野晶子. Spanish translation of the English by Dora Sales Salvador, Viajes por Manchuria y Mongolia.
  • The Taiping Rebellion. Translation of Taihei tengoku 太平天国 by Chin Shunshin 陳舜臣.
  • '. Translation of Seigaku tōzen to Chūgoku jijō: 'zassho' sakki 西学東漸と中囯亊情 : "雑書" 札記 by Masuda Wataru 增田涉.
  • Pioneer of the Chinese Revolution: Zhang Binglin and Confucianism. Translation of several works by Shimada Kenji 島田虔次.
  • Bilingualism in the History of Jewish Literature. Translation of Di tsveyshprakhikeyt fun undzer literatur די צוויישפּראַכיקייט פֿון אונדזער ליטעראַטור by Shmuel Niger שמואל ניגער.
  • Recent Japanese Studies of Modern Chinese History . Translations from the journal Shigaku zasshi 史學雜誌, surveying Japanese writings on Chinese history.
  • Life along the South Manchurian Railway: The Memoirs of Itō Takeo. Translation of Mantetsu ni ikite 満鉄に生きて by Itō Takeo 伊藤武雄.
  • Murder in a Peking Studio. Translation of Pekin yūyūkan 北京悠々館 by Chin Shunshin 陳舜臣.
  • '. Translation of Chūgoku chūsei shakai to kyōdōtai 中国中世社会と共同体 by Tanigawa Michio 谷川道雄.
  • Recent Japanese Studies of Modern Chinese History. Translations from the journal Shigaku zasshi 史學雜誌, surveying Japanese writings on Chinese history.
  • Naitō Konan and the Development of the Conception of Modernity in Chinese History. Translations from the major writings of Naitō Konan 内藤湖南.
In addition, he is the author or translator of nearly 400 articles, book chapters, or major reviews.