Bill Mihalopoulos

Bill teaches across a range of subjects in Asia Pacific Studies. His expertise is in the interconnectedness of Japan’s history with the wider Asia-Pacific region and in labour and gender history. He also does work on documentary film-making. Bill is Fellow of Royal Historical Society, Research Associate at SOAS, University of London, and Chief Editor for Japan Forum (2019-22).

Bill is s a versatile historian, specialising in transnational history with a focus on Japanese encounters with and impact on the wider Asia-Pacific region. He has published widely in peer reviewed journals renowned for their interdisciplinary character and innovative research. Bill’s first monograph Sex in Japan’s Globalization, 1870-1930: Prostitutes, Emigration and Nation Building was published 2011, and reissued in paperback 2016.

Bill has a wealth of international teaching experience having worked in Australia, Japan, Korea, U.A.E and United States of America. Bill grew up on a fruit farm in rural South Australia. Education has allowed him to explore the world in ways he never imagined when he was a young man. He wishes to pass on this opportunity to others.

Ph.D. History, New York University, 2000
M. Litt. Oriental Studies, University of Cambridge, 1996
M.A. Japanese History, Kyushu University, 1988
B.A. Asian Studies and History, University of Adelaide, 1983

Japanese modern history
Anglo-Japanese relations
Trafficking in people, slavery and human rights
Legal history and international law

Fellow of Royal Historical Society
Association of Asian Studies
British Association of Japanese Studies
European Association of Japanese Studies

Bill's research has focused on the transient rural poor who have no history. The declassé mishmash who do not exist in official versions of Japanese modern history. By focusing on people who occupy a marginal space in Japanese history, Bill has highlighted how modernization was a project focused upon finding formulas for re-configuring personal conduct with political objectives.

His manuscript Sex in Japan’s Globalization, 1870-1930 was based on extensive archival research undertaken in Japan, Britain and the United States, and investigated on a contradiction inherent in the efforts of Meiji Japan to incorporate Japan into a global economy. Japanese authorities promoted trade, industry and the “free” movement of Japanese labourers abroad, while at the same time they laboured to implement administrative measures to prevent “unacceptable” Japanese women from pursuing work overseas.

Bill's work on Japanese documentaries also focuses on people who occupied a marginal social space – unreturned imperial soldiers, Burakumin (Japanese outcaste class), black marketers, prostitutes, brothel madams, and bar hostess to American navy personnel.

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UCLan Research Centre for Migration, Diaspora and Exile (MIDEX)
UCLan Centre for History and Public Engagement with the Past

Liberty’s Shackles: Freedom, Consent and Sexual Servitude in Modern Japan deals with three pressing issues of the 21st Century: trafficking in people, slavery, and human rights.

UCLan Faculty research grants 2018/2019 and 2019/20
The Great British Sasakawa Foundation Grant 2020

“Freedom’s Shackles: Consent and Sexual Slavery in Meiji Japan,” UCLan, Northwest England Research Network for East Asian Studies, 27 November 2019
“Slavery and Consent in Meiji Japan,” SOAS, University of London, Japanese Research Centre Seminar, 16 October 2019.
“Meiji Japan in World History: To Converge or not to Converge,” UCLan History Seminar, 6 February 2018.
“The Abhorrent Body of the Enslaved: British Military Medicine's Encounter with Japanese Prostitution, East Asian Studies Research Seminar Series 2016-17, University of Manchester, 17 November 2016.
“Free Labour or Servitude: the illusion of consent in Japan,” Thinking Labour Rights through the ‘Coolie Question’ Symposium, University of Sydney, 17-18 September, 2015.

Telephone:44 (0) 1772 89 5497

Email:bmihalopoulos@uclan.ac.uk

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Dr Bill Mihalopoulos