Nibei Foundation – Japan Study Club >> Psychoanalytic Approach of Studying Meiji Leadership by Dr. Gordon Berger, June 29
Meiji leader Mutsu Munemitsu
Nibei Foundation Japan Study Club
June Lecture: June 29, Dinner at 6:30 pm, Lecture at 7:30 pm
Subject: Foreign Minister Mutsu Munemitsu: Psychoanalytic Approach of Studying Meiji Leadership
Speaker: Dr. Gordon Berger, Professor Emeritus of Japanese History at the University of Southern California (USC)
Place: Terasaki Foundation Laboratory Building
11570 Olympic Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90064
RSVP by email japanstudies@nibei.org or call
(310) 479-6101 ext 134, and leave voice mail.
Japan’s Meiji leaders were some of the boldest, and most successful, leaders the world has known. Almost alone among all of the non-Western societies confronted by Western imperialism, Japan’s leaders not only overthrew the existing state apparatus, but focused every effort on making Japan secure and independent of the other powers.
One way they did that was to build an empire themselves.
Dr. Berger’s talk asks the question why these men – most of them young samurai – responded to the Western threat as they did. There are many good explanations, thanks to the large amount of research done on the topic of making a modern state in Japan.
On June 29, the participants of the lecture consider some of the psychological motivations for taking the steps of nation-building and empire-building characteristic of the Meiji era. The focus is on one of those men, Mutsu Munemitsu, the Meiji era foreign minister.
Gordon Berger received his Ph.D in Japanese history from Yale University in 1972, and his psychoanalytic training at the Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute, in Beverly Hills.
He graduated from SCPI with the Ph.D in 1990, and has been in private practice as a psycho-therapist since that time.
He is a Training and Supervising Analyst and former member of the Board of Directors of the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis and a member of the teaching faculty at the New Center for Psychoanalysis.
He is also Professor Emeritus of Japanese History at the University of Southern California.
He is the author or editor of four books and nearly 40 articles on Japanese history, and four articles on psychoanalysis.
