Ukraine’s Agency in Japanese Discourse: Everything Ok With Government and People, While Academia in Trouble
Ukraine’s Agency in Japanese Discourse: Everything Ok With Government and People, While Academia in Trouble

Summary/Abstract: Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has highlighted the problems of the Japanese academic discourse on Ukraine. This essay has two purposes. First, it describes how Russia’s invasion has altered Tokyo’s official policies and public discourse by driving away Russian disinformation and propaganda narratives while articulating the multiple chasms among academics regarding Ukraine and Russia. Second, it highlights the embedded assumptions commonly seen in many researchers dealing with post-Soviet space: Russia-centred ontology (e.g., “Ukraine is a periphery of Russia”, “fraternal nations”) and counterhegemonic epistemology that blames the collective West for “Russophobia.”

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