Biography

I am a historian of Premodern Japan, with an emphasis on the sixteenth century. In particular, I am interested in smaller, non-warrior political groups, and how they interacted with each other and the larger, better understood groups and structures. Most of my research has been focused on the temples of the Nichiren Buddhist sect in Kyoto of the 15^th century.

I received my doctorate at the University of Southern California, and have worked as a post-doctoral at USC and at the Kyoto Institute, Library and Archives.

How Things Worked

My main interests in historical research often boil down to “how did that work?” I come across an event or document and say to myself “but how could that be?”

For example, while I was in grad school, I came across this letter, written sometime before 1549:

The gun that you have provisioned us with from Tanegashima has arrived here. We are truly overjoyed. We will also send our gratitude to the island by way of letter. There will also be a be a token of our gratitude. This will be reported to you by Furutsu Shuri no shin. 

Fourth Month, 18^th Day                                 [From:][Hosokawa] Harumoto (Seal)

[To:]Honnōji

This letter is a thank you note. Honnōji is a Nichiren sect temple in Kyoto, and Hosokawa Harumoto was a high-ranking official in the military government. Tanegashima is an island towards the southwest of the Japanese archipelago, known as the first site of European contact with Japan.   

The questions became clear:

Why does a temple in Kyoto decide to send a weapon to the leader of a military government? How did it get the firearm? How many firearms are involved? Are Nichiren sect temples running firearms into the capital?

And thus began what would become my dissertation project. I never could answer those questions, but in trying to solve them I was able to explore the structure of the Council of Head Temples, which became the focus of my research.

 

The Joy of Documents

There is nothing like wading through a sixteenth century document, and taking if from a chaotic jumble of Chinese characters to a window into the far past. This is, to me, the essence of the historical project, and I try to put across the importance of reading primary source documents to my readers and my students.  

In the past I helped run USC’s Kambun Workshop, and I am now teaching courses on reading Premodern Japanese sources here at the Hebrew University. Japanese documents, especially official ones, represent a unique set of challenges, as most of them were written in a sort of idiosyncratic hybrid Chinese commonly called hentai Kambun. As the Chinese language has a very different (indeed, basically opposite) sentence structure from Japanese, the words must move to create a sensible sentence in Japanese. The system of doing this makes the various verbs dance about in the sentence. Sometimes the authors left us marks to show us how they intended us to read the words. Other times, we must strike out on our own. It is an exciting if sometimes frustrating thing, but also deeply satisfying when the meaning of the words becomes apparent to you.

 

Curriculum Vitae