Changes

Amino became devotedly engaged in leftist popular & student activism during his college years, and for a few years after his graduation from the University of Tokyo in 1950. He worked for a short time as a researcher at the Institute for the Study of Japanese Folk Culture, and also married around this time, shortly after his graduation.

Amino became devotedly engaged in leftist popular & student activism during his college years, and for a few years after his graduation from the University of Tokyo in 1950. He worked for a short time as a researcher at the Institute for the Study of Japanese Folk Culture, and also married around this time, shortly after his graduation.

The Institute he had been working at was shuttered around 1953, and Amino did a number of odd jobs before finally becoming a high school history teacher. Around this same time, Amino came to reject the mode popular at the time, which focused heavily on fitting Japan into conceptual frameworks such as Marxist historiography, instead shifting to focus more on a document-based approach to understanding Japanese pre-modern culture and society within its own context.

The Institute he had been working at was shuttered around 1953, and Amino did a number of odd jobs before finally becoming a high school history teacher. He has said that teaching high school history, which required him to cover the history of Japan in a broad manner, simplifying and distilling complex concepts, provided the opportunity and impetus to rethink some of the broad-ranging underlying assumptions inherent in the mainstream interpretation of Japanese history.

 

Around this same time, Amino came to reject the modes of scholarship popular at the time, which focused heavily on fitting Japan into conceptual frameworks such as Marxist historiography, instead shifting to focus more on a document-based approach to understanding Japanese pre-modern culture and society within its own context.

He continued teaching high school for a number of years, before in the late 1960s taking a position teaching at [[Nagoya University]]. His research at this time focused chiefly on medieval ''[[shoen|shôen]]'' estates, and in the late 1960s through early 1970s he published a number of works on that subject. Disillusioned, however, with the standard historical narrative being taught in high schools, by the late 1980s he was making arguments with much more broad-ranging implications, addressing understandings and interpretations of pre-modern through early modern Japanese history more broadly. His earliest groundbreaking work in this vein is said to have been ''Muen, kugai, raku'' ("Disconnectedness, Public Space, and Markets"), published in 1978. He would later expand upon these ideas in a book entitled ''Nihon no rekishi wo yominaosu'' ("Re-reading the History of Japan", 1991), and in a continuation volume, published in 1996. These have now been translated by [[Alan Christy]] and released in English as the single volume ''Rethinking Japanese History'' (2012).

He continued teaching high school for a number of years, before in the late 1960s taking a position teaching at [[Nagoya University]]. His research at this time focused chiefly on medieval ''[[shoen|shôen]]'' estates, and in the late 1960s through early 1970s he published a number of works on that subject. Disillusioned, however, with the standard historical narrative being taught in high schools, by the late 1980s he was making arguments with much more broad-ranging implications, addressing understandings and interpretations of pre-modern through early modern Japanese history more broadly. His earliest groundbreaking work in this vein is said to have been ''Muen, kugai, raku'' ("Disconnectedness, Public Space, and Markets"), published in 1978. He would later expand upon these ideas in a book entitled ''Nihon no rekishi wo yominaosu'' ("Re-reading the History of Japan", 1991), and in a continuation volume, published in 1996. These have now been translated by [[Alan Christy]] and released in English as the single volume ''Rethinking Japanese History'' (2012).

During the 1990s, Amino was so prominent that bookstores often devoted entire shelves, or sections, to his works. Even at this time, however, school curricula and textbooks remained powerfully constrained by the need to "teach to" college entrance exams, which themselves were based on the standard interpretations of history; though Amino was approached at times to help produce educational materials, such materials very often went unused, as they challenged the understandings students would need to memorize in order to succeed on their exams.

During the 1990s, Amino was so prominent that bookstores often devoted entire shelves, or sections, to his works. Even at this time, however, school curricula and textbooks remained powerfully constrained by the need to "teach to" college entrance exams, which themselves were based on the standard interpretations of history; though Amino was approached at times to help produce educational materials, such materials very often went unused, as they challenged the understandings students would need to memorize in order to succeed on their exams. By the end of his career, Amino had penned over four hundred works.

Amino passed away in 2004.

Following Amino's death in 2004, many of his works were republished, many of them as part of a newly compiled series entitled ''Amino Yoshihiko chosakushû'' (The Collected Works of Amino Yoshihiko). This set consists of eighteen volumes plus one additional volume (''bekkan'').

==Publications==

==Selected Publications==

*''Higashi to nishi no kataru Nihon no rekishi'' 東と西の語る日本の歴史 ("Japanese History Speaking of East and West"). Tokyo: Soshiete, 1982.

*''Higashi to nishi no kataru Nihon no rekishi'' 東と西の語る日本の歴史 ("Japanese History Speaking of East and West"). Tokyo: Soshiete, 1982.

*''Nihon chûsei no hinôgyômin to tennô'' 日本中世の非農業民と天皇 ("Non-Agricultural Peoples of Medieval Japan and the Emperor"). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1984.

*''Nihon chûsei no hinôgyômin to tennô'' 日本中世の非農業民と天皇 ("Non-Agricultural Peoples of Medieval Japan and the Emperor"). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1984.

*Amino Yoshihiko. "Deconstructing 'Japan'." ''East Asian History'' 3 (1992), 121.

*Amino Yoshihiko. "Deconstructing 'Japan'." ''East Asian History'' 3 (1992), 121.

*"[http://kotobank.jp/word/%E7%B6%B2%E9%87%8E%E5%96%84%E5%BD%A6 Amino Yoshihiko]," ''Nihon jinmei daijiten'' 日本人名大辞典, Kodansha, 2009.

*"[http://kotobank.jp/word/%E7%B6%B2%E9%87%8E%E5%96%84%E5%BD%A6 Amino Yoshihiko]," ''Nihon jinmei daijiten'' 日本人名大辞典, Kodansha, 2009.

*Alan Christy, "Translator's Introduction," ''Rethinking Japanese History'', Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan (2012), xiii-xxxii.

*Alan Christy, "Translator's Introduction," and Hitomi Tonomura, "Afterword," in Alan Christy (trans.) ''Rethinking Japanese History'', Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan (2012), xiii-xxxii, 277-286.

[[Category:Historians]]

[[Category:Historians]]