Japan's relationship with China and Asia - Historical Backgrounds and Recent Developments

Klaus Antoni is a Japanologist, specialising in culture studies and history of religious ideas. After chairs at the Universities of Hamburg (1987) and Trier (1993) he took over the chair for Japanese Cultural Studies at the Institute for Japanese Studies at Tübingen University in 1998. In 1991 he received the first international research award of the Tamaki-Foundation at the University of Vienna. In 2005 Antoni was Invited Visiting Scholar at the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University. Professor Antoni's principal research interests lie in the areas of cultural and religious history, in particular the relationships between religion (Shintô) and ideology in pre-modern and modern Japan. He is also interested in theories concerning Japanese culture (e.g. cultural stereotypes on Japan) in general as well as in the historical and present relationship between Japan and the rest of Asia.