Dr Janet Borland

Janet Borland has been awarded a three-year ARC Postdoctoral Fellowship commencing in 2009 for a project entitled ‘Sites of Learning, Spaces of State: Reconstructed Primary Schools and Small Parks in Tokyo, 1923-1945.’

Janet completed undergraduate degrees in Arts and Science at the University of Melbourne where she majored in Japanese and psychology. She completed her MA in 2003 and her PhD in 2008. In essence, her previous, current, and proposed research interests revolve around how the Japanese government, elites, educators and local associations have attempted to use natural disasters and the process of reconstruction opportunistically to better manage subjects, citizens, and society in the modern period.

Her PhD thesis, entitled ‘Rebuilding Schools and Society after the Great Kanto Earthquake, 1923-1930,’ explored how and why Japanese educators used the reconstruction program that followed the 1923 earthquake to spiritually reinvigorate society through schools and education. While reform efforts influenced the content of the moral and physical education curricula, her research uncovered that the most significant legacy surrounded the physical reconstruction of Tokyo’s primary schools. The primary goal of Janet’s ARC project is to investigate the establishment and evolution of primary schools and small parks in Tokyo, and their role in state and society, from 1923 to 1945. Specifically, it aims to determine how two important civic facilities typically identified as sites of learning and sites of leisure, increasingly came to be used as spaces of state.

Publications and conference papers:

• 'The School One Attends: In the Ruins of Tokyo, 1923,' Japanese Studies, 2009 (forthcoming).
• 'Lessons from History for Today and Tomorrow: Disaster Prevention and Education in Japanese Schools Following the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake,' Education Without Borders Conference Proceedings, Abu Dhabi, UAE, 25-27 February 2007.
• 'Capitalising on Catastrophe: Reinvigorating the Japanese State with Moral Values Through Education Following the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake,' Modern Asian Studies 40(4), October 2006: 875-907.
• 'Stories of Ideal Japanese Subjects from the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923,' Japanese Studies 25 (1), May 2005: 21-34.

Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University, South Street, Murdoch, WA 6150. Fax: 9360 6381, Email: janetborland@gmail.com