Yoshihiko Amino facts for kids

Yoshihiko Amino (網野 善彦, Amino Yoshihiko, January 22, 1928 – February 27, 2004) was a famous Japanese historian and thinker. He was best known for his new ways of looking at the history of medieval Japan. Even though not much of his work is available in English, many Japanese writers and historians see him as one of the most important historians of the 1900s. Some of his ideas can now be found in English. They show how he changed many common beliefs about Japanese history.

About Yoshihiko Amino

Yoshihiko Amino was born in Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan, in 1928. He went to high school in Tokyo. He studied history at the University of Tokyo with a teacher named Ishimoda Shō. There, he became interested in a way of studying history that looks at how society and money affect things. He also joined student movements after World War II.

After graduating, Amino taught at a high school for several years. He became a university professor at Nagoya University in 1956. Later, in 1980, he moved to Kanagawa University. He chose this university because it gave him more time to do research and write.

At Kanagawa University, he worked with an anthropologist named Miyata Noboru. They led a special group that studied Japanese folklore. Amino kept writing until he passed away in 2004. He stopped teaching and doing research at universities in 1998.

Amino's New Ideas on History

Amino started his career by studying the lives of people in small villages. He also looked at groups of Japanese people who lived outside big cities. He carefully studied old documents and records. This helped him understand how different groups of people lived.

He found that medieval Japan was not just one single country. Instead, it was made up of many different societies. Some of these groups did not even know about the Japanese emperor.

In the last 30 years of his life, Amino rewrote many common ideas about Japanese history. These ideas had been very strong since the Meiji period. He helped people question old myths about what it meant to be Japanese.

He passed away from lung cancer on February 27, 2004, when he was 76 years old.

Amino's Impact and Legacy

Yoshihiko Amino was a very busy historian. He wrote at least 486 known works. These included newspaper articles, book reviews, and many original articles and books. William Johnston, a history professor, said that it would take a whole book just to introduce all of Amino's work.

Even though he wrote so much and was famous in Japan, only a few of his works have been translated into English. This means that many people outside Japan don't know about his important ideas. For example, one of his most important books is called Muen, Kugai, Raku. Many people talk about it, but few have read it.

One reason for this is that much of his work focuses on very specific details of medieval Japan. These details are often only interesting to experts. Also, his later work, which was popular in Japan, was about topics like Japanese origins or rice farming. These topics might be less interesting to a general audience outside Japan.

However, a good summary of some of Amino's main findings is now available in English.

Selected Works by Amino

Books

• 1991: 日本の歴史をよみなおす (Reinterpreting Japanese History). Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo.
• 1990: 日本論の視座――列島の社会と国家 (A New Standpoint on Nihon-ron: Society and the State on the Archipelago). Shogakkukan.
• 1978: 無縁・公界・楽――日本中世の自由と平和 (Muen, Kugai, Raku: Liberty and Peace in Medieval Japan). Heibonsha.
• 1966: 中世荘園の様相 (Conditions on Medieval Estates).

Articles

• 2007: "Medieval Japanese Constructions of Peace and Liberty: Muen, Kugai, and Raku". International Journal of Asian Studies 4 (1): 3–14.
• 2001: "Commerce and finance in the Middle Ages: The beginnings of ‘capitalism’". Acta Asiatica 81: 1–19.
• 1996: "Emperor, Rice, and Commoners". In Donald Denoon, Mark Hudson, Gavan McCormack, and Tessa Morris-Suzuki, eds. Multicultural Japan: Palaeolithic to Postmodern. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996: 235–245
• 1995: "Les Japonais et la mer" ("The Japanese and the Sea"). Annales 50 (2): 235–258. (French)
• 1992: "Deconstructing 'Japan'". East Asian History 3: 121–142. Translated by Gavan McCormack, pdf available
• 1983: "Some problems concerning the history of popular life in medieval Japan". Acta Asiatica 44: 77–97.