Arron O'Connor
DPhil Student - Wolfson College
arron.oconnor@history.ox.ac.uk
Research Topic: Fake Tales of Edo: How misrepresentation, distortion and fictionalisation manifested apposite visions of the world in 19th century Japan
I am a historian of Japan’s nineteenth century, interested in the longevity of supposedly pre-modern cultural and intellectual practices across the Meiji Ishin (commonly translated into English as Meiji Restoration). In particular, I work on excavating the historical consciousness of common people in Edo/Tokyo to problematise chronologies that have been imposed upon the history of Japan.
This work builds upon my MPhil research which examined the social and intellectual history of consumption and readership in nineteenth-century Japan. I examined how playful fakes, forgeries and counterfeits in the literary scene of the mid-nineteenth reveal a conception of the past that was co-eval with the present, allowing for the co-existence of many temporalities. In such a way, this literature both undermines absolute time and exists in a space appositional to the authority embedded in such systems as rely upon linear chronology (state history, for instance). I situated this discussion in the printing and publishing practices of 1830s Edo, with a focus on Ryūtei Tanehiko’s Nise Murasaki inaka Genji.
I received my BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Oxford, after which I worked as an Outreach Officer for three years at one of the University’s colleges. I am currently pursuing my DPhil in History at Wolfson College with the generous support of the Sasakawa Scholarship.
Supervisor: Sho Konishi
Research Interests:
- 19th century social and intellectual history
- Material and media consumption in late-Tokugawa Japan
- Edo publishing practices and culture
Prizes and Funding
- Sasakawa Postgraduate Studentship (2025-2026)
- Stockwin Scholarship (2025-2026)
- Sasakawa Scholarship (2026-)
