I am a scholar of early modern Ryukyu (Okinawa) and Japan, associate professor & research manager at the Art Research Center, Ritsumeikan University, in Kyoto, and Research Affiliate at the Institute of Okinawan Arts and Culture, Okinawa Prefectural University of the Arts. From 2019 to 2023 I enjoyed a position at the University of Tokyo Historiographical Institute.
My current book project, based on a PhD dissertation in History completed in 2019, explores the role of visual, material, and performative aspects of diplomatic ritual in constituting and maintaining political realities, through an examination of a series of seventeen embassies dispatched in the 17th-19th centuries from the Okinawan kingdom of Lūchū (or Ryūkyū in Japanese) to Edo, the seat of the Tokugawa shoguns of Japan.
My research interests include visual, material, and performance arts and culture; court culture and court ritual; issues of heritage and tradition; Museum Studies and the politics of display; and issues pertaining to island, minority, and indigenous cultures. I specialize in particular in the study of early modern (17th-19th c.) Okinawa and Japan, but maintain a strong interest in Okinawan and Japanese culture and history of both earlier and more recent periods, as well as the cultures and histories of East Asia more broadly and of the Pacific Islands.
立命館大学アート・リサーチセンターのリサーチ・マネージャー及び准教授のサイフマン・トラビスと申します。兼ねて沖縄県立芸術大学芸術文化研究所の共同研究員との位も享受いたします。2019年～2023年の間は、東京大学史料編纂所で特任研究員として務めておりました。 専門は近世琉球と日本の歴史・文化ということです。
近世琉球王朝が江戸へ派遣した使節における外交儀礼についての博士論文を現在改めて書籍を執筆中です。外交儀礼の視覚的・聴覚的・物質的・演劇的な面の外交・上下関係を実現した役を果たすことについて論じようとします。
他の研究テーマといえば、王朝・藩・幕府の儀礼と文化、美術史・芸術史、伝統や文化遺産の研究、博物館学、そして島嶼文化・歴史、少数民族の文化・歴史、先住民研究というテーマにも興味を持っています。専門は琉球・日本の近世時代ですが、前近代・近代・現代の琉球と日本、または東アジアと太平洋諸島の文化・歴史も興味を持っています。
PhD, History, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2019
MA, Art History, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, 2012
MA, Japanese Studies, SOAS (University of London), 2007
BA, History & East Asian Studies, Brandeis University, 2004
I work primarily with materials in Japanese, written by both Japanese and Ryukyuan writers in the sōrōbun and kanbun (literary Chinese) writing styles and in kuzushiji handwriting.
I have had the pleasure of volunteering, interning, or working at a number of museums and galleries, as well as co-curating an exhibition. I am a beginner-level student of classical and folk Okinawan uta-sanshin music, and am currently in search of a teacher based in Kyoto.
All photographs my own.
Top: Rooftops at Nakamura Family House, Nakagusuku, Okinawa, 2016.
Middle: Kokusai-dōri, Naha, Okinawa, 2020.
Bottom: The Main Hall (O: Umundasui udun) of Shuri castle, with a temporary platform erected for a reenactment of Qing investiture ceremonies, Shuri, Okinawa, Oct 2016.