Institute of Japanese Studies Dr. Martin Blahota

I am a postdoctoral research fellow at Heidelberg University (Germany), where I was sent by the Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences for two years. I studied at Charles University in Prague (Czech Republic) and held research positions or fellowships at East China Normal University (China), National Tsing Hua University (Taiwan), Harvard University (USA), and Tokyo Metropolitan University (Japan). My research focuses on modern Chinese literature, colonial modernity in East Asia, and the representation of identity. I have published in peer-reviewed journals and presented my work at international conferences and workshops. Currently, I am completing a book manuscript on the representation of East Asian identities in Manchukuo’s Chinese-language literature. I have also translated works by Yang Mu and Egoyan Zheng into Czech.

My research project at Heidelberg University:

Nomadic Spirituality: Unstable Buddhist Identities in East Asian Borderlands

My current research project builds a new understanding of the political and literary history of East Asian borderlands in the first half of the 20th century by focusing on the spiritual dimension of identities in relation to borders. Bridging Japanese and Chinese studies and drawing on cultural, postcolonial, and border studies, this project is centred around the concept of nomadic spirituality – that is, the open spiritual affiliation of individuals whose faiths fluctuate between the religious and the secular during their lives, as opposed to maintaining a single religious faith. The project examines prominent Chinese and Japanese writers/intellectuals, who are dominantly associated with the secular literary scene. The main goal is to demonstrate that at specific stages of their literary careers, their writings engaged with Buddhist concepts, which they used for various purposes, both personal and social.