Edwin Michielsen is a scholar of modern Japanese and East Asian literature and culture whose research explores the intersections of culture, politics, and social movements across national and linguistic boundaries. His current book project examines how proletarian cultural workers in the Japanese empire envisioned and practiced international solidarity during the 1920s and 1930s. By focusing on proletarian literature, art, and activism related to international labor festivals (May Day), linguistic exchange (Esperanto), reproductive rights, Indigenous struggles, and antiwar activism, his work highlights the complex networks that linked local and global struggles against imperialism, capitalism, and social injustice.

In addition to this historical research, Edwin’s broader scholarly interests extend into postwar and contemporary Japanese literature and culture, particularly around questions of ecology, mental health, and labor practices in relation to technology and economic conditions.

Research interests:

Modern and Contemporary Japanese and East Asian Literature

Proletarian and Marginalized Literatures

Transnational and Global Studies

Labor and Solidarity Studies

Critical Theory

Publications:

“Confessing Unrepresentability: Photography and Panoramic Depiction in Tayama Katai’s Russo-Japanese War Diary.” Journal of Japanese Studies vol. 52, no. 1 (forthcoming February 2026).

“Resisting Prison Time: Hayashi Fusao and ‘May Day in Prison’.” In Alternative Temporalities: The Emancipatory Power of Narrative, edited by Teresa Valentini, Angela Weiser, and John Zilcosky (University of Toronto Press, 2025), 175-188.

https://doi.org/10.3138/9781487551933-012

“Revolutionary Tongues: Esperanto, Marxist Linguistics, and Anti-imperial Struggles in East Asia, 1930s–1940s.” Cultural History vol. 13, no. 2 (2024): 149-173.

https://doi.org/10.3366/cult.2024.0307

“The Basement of the Pleasure Club” by Itō Ken (Translation). The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 22, no. 7.2 (2024): 1-13.

https://apjjf.org/2024/7/leckie-michielsen

“Puroretaria bungaku to senjūmin mondai: Tsuruta Tomoya no Koshamain-ki ni okeru Ainu tōsō to rentai no tankyū.” Riberashon: Jinken Kenkyū Fukuoka, no. 192 (2023): 24-34.

https://cir.nii.ac.jp/crid/1520017035733120768

“Seizing/Ceasing Reproduction: Matsuda Tokiko, Birth Control Politics, and Proletarian Solidarity in ‘Chichi o uru.’” Proceedings of the Association for Japanese Literary Studies 21 (2022): 89-109.

https://doi.org/10.26812/pajls.v21i.1655

“Hirabayashi Taiko ‘Seryōshitsu nite’: Puroretaria bungaku to sanji seigen to no kakawari o haikei ni.” Kokubungaku kenkyū shiryōkan kiyō bungaku kenkyūhen, no. 48 (2022): 259-288.

https://doi.org/10.24619/00004451

“Fighting Fascism with ‘Verbal Bullets’: Kaji Wataru and the Antifascist Struggle in Wartime East Asia.” Fascism 9, no. 1-2 (2020): 9-33.

https://doi.org/10.1163/22116257-09010006.

“A Marxist Sherlock Holmes: Itō Ken and the Proletarian Detective in 1920s Shanghai.” The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus 17:6, no. 6 (2019):1-16. https://apjjf.org/2019/06/Michielsen.html

Teaching:

JAPN2074 China in the Japanese Literary Imagination

JAPN2075 Postwar and Contemporary Japanese Literature

JAPN1011 Introduction to Japanese Studies