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This article examines the significance of engaging in Asian American studies in Asia, with examples drawn primarily from Japan. It asks: what happens when this US-based racial minority studies is relocated to the place where Asians do not constitute racial minorities? The paper argues that, on the one hand, the intellectual encounter between Asia and Asian America encourages the US-based minority studies to examine their implications in American imperialism in their perceptions towards Asia. On the other hand, Asian American studies as the racial minority discourse forces ethno-racial majority Asians, with all our ethnic, national, and other differences, to reflect upon the racial, ethnic, and (neo)colonial relations in our own lands while critiquing the inequalities that are taking place in and across Asia. The paper looks at the forms of minority struggles in Japan, zainichi Koreans and Okinawans, in order to propel the US Asian American scholars to decentralize their work and perspectives. It is my hope that this new perspective generated from Asia-based Asian American studies will help construct a place of mutual learning, where we can engage in conversation to ask new questions, to challenge and transform Asian American studies as we know it. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Takeuchi Yoshimi was a leading thinker in Postwar Japan. The originality of his work has been rediscovered in the past decade. Based on the present author's Asia as Method—toward De-Imperialization (2010) as a point of dialogue, this essay rereads Takeuchi's intuitive formulation of ‘Asia as Method’ in the 1960 and tries to pinpoint different characteristics of knowledge conditions between now and then. It discovers that the ‘Inter-Asia methodology’ imagined in Takeuchi's time is still a viable proposition to be implemented today, if we hope to break away with the dominant mode of thought that has been trapped in the colonial structure of academic institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Comments on the author's experience in attendance of the 2000 Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Conference. Impact of the conference on the author; Emphasis on socio-political issues; Discussions of the orientations and research.

Highlights on the 2000 Inter-Asia cultural studies conference statement. Goals of the conference; Theme of the conference; Discussion of issues on colonialism, imperialism and nationalism; Elaboration on the subjects which affects the societies.