Meet Michael Lucken, historian and art historian, specialist in contemporary Japan (IFRAE)

26 September 2025

LaCAS
Open Science
IFRAE
Menu Research

"Portraits de chercheurs(e)s en études aréales" (PEA) takes a look at the academic career and research and teaching work of researchers and teachers specializing in a given cultural area. Each month, discover a video and podcast interview with one of these specialists.

Michael Lucken (Collection PEA) © Dimitri Galitzine‎

The collection "Portraits of Researchers in Area Studies" (PEA) is a series of large-format interviews produced by Inalco as part of the Language and Cultural Area Studies (LaCAS) project. Deposited on the MediHal open archive, this series of portraits joins a set of collections on the LaCAS platform. These collections aim to build up a living, freely accessible scientific heritage of research on the world's languages, societies and cultures.

Large-format portrait

Video: From Japanese studies to areal studies: for an integrated reflection on the cultural history of Japan
An interview conducted by Bastien Sepúlveda, in charge of Digital Humanities (DIRVED, Inalco), directed by Dimitri Galitzine, produced by Inalco (30/10/2024, 46 mn)

Podcast:

Michael Lucken is Professor of Japanese Studies at Inalco and a member of the Institut français de recherche sur l'Asie de l'Est (IFRAE, UMR 8043). He is interested in the cultural history of Japan, which he approaches through the prism of artistic practices and historical memory, with particular reference to the Second World War. In this interview, he presents the research he is carrying out on these issues, which he also integrates into a broader reflection on areal studies.

Michael Lucken, has taught at Inalco since 1998, where he was appointed professor in 2006. In 2023, he was named a member of the Institut Universitaire de France.

Historian and art historian, he is a specialist in modern Japan and defends a vision of history that is differential and in tension. Having long explored representations of the Second World War in East Asia, for the past ten years he has been working on the mechanisms of circulation and appropriation of ideas.

Author of several monographs, he has received several awards for his work, notably for Les Japonais et la guerre, 1937-1952 (Fayard, 2013, prix Thiers), and Le Japon grec. Culture et possession (Gallimard, 2019, the Grand Prix des Rendez-Vous de l'Histoire de Blois in 2019 and Prix Martine Aublet in 2019).

He has published, among others: Grenades et Amertume: les peintres japonais à l'épreuve de la guerre (Les Belles Lettres, 2005); 1945-Hiroshima: les images-sources (Hermann, 2008); Les Japonais et la guerre, 1937-1952 (Fayard, 2013 - prix Thiers); Nakai Masakazu. Birth of critical theory in Japan (Presses du réel, 2015); Les Fleurs artificielles: création, imitation et logique de domination (Presses de l'Inalco, 2016); Japon, l'archipel du sens (Perrin, 2016); Imitation and Creativity in Japanese Arts from Kishida Ryūsei to Miyazaki Hayao (Columbia University Press, 2016); and L'universel étranger (éditions Amsterdam, 2022).

His latest work Les occupants. Americans in Japan after the Second World War has just been published by La découverte (September 2025). Michael Lucken talks about it in Paroles d'Histoires, a podcast devoted to the latest in books, research and debate in history:

"399. Occupied Japan, with Michael Lucken"
Paroles d'histoire (podcast produced by André Loez), 08/09/2025