Welcome to the Personal Home Page

of

Ronald P. Loftus

 

Professor Emeritus

Department of History and Japanese Studies

Willamette University

Visiting the birthplace of Taoka Reiun (1870-1912), Kochi City, June 1996

 

 

Contact Information:

Currently:

Adjunct Professor

Willamette University

 

 

Office

Walton Hall 147

 

Phone: 503-370-6275

Mobile: 503-507-9391

 

Email rloftus@willamette.edu

 

Personal Information:

I was born in Washington, D.C. and after age 5, spent my first 12 years living outside the U.S.. I lived in India, France, Italy, and Thailand. After graduating high-school from the International School of Bangkok, I returned to my birthplace, Washington, D.C., to study at George Washington University. From there, I entered the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (S.A.I.S.) earning a masters degree in International Relations where I took for my first course on Japan. Later, I earned a Ph.D. in Modern Japanese History from Claremont Graduate School (1975), where I studied with Professor Peter Duus. When I went to Japan fror dissertation research I was mentored in Japan by Professors Nishida Masaru and Kano Masanao. As part of my graduate work, I attended the Stanford Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies in Tokyo for a year of intensive Japanese language training and benefitted enormously from research fellowships from the Japan Foundation (1984, 2007) and the Fulbright Commission (1976, 1990), as well as the Atkinson Fund and the Center for Asian Studies at Willamette University.

In 2008, I was very fortunate to be a Visiting Scholar in the Women and Gender Studies Program at Ochanomizu Women's University while on a sabbatical leave. My first two book publications were Telling Lives (2004) and Changing Lives (2013) both dealing with autobiographies and memoirs by Japanese women.

In 2017, I finished my third book, The Turn Against the Modern: The Critical Essays of Taoka Reiun (1870-1912). (For details, see below).

I began my full-time teaching career 1977 at Western Washington University, and moved to Willamette University 1983. I am currently Professor Emeritus of Japanese Language and East Asian History. My teaching interests include Japanese Language, Japanese Literature in Translation, Modern Japanese History, Postwar Japan, Gateweay to Asian Studies and Japanese Cinema.

Visit my courses at the following Links:

 

Research Interests:

 

Taoka Reiun (1870-1912), a nineteenth-century literary and social critic known for his anti-modernism stance. Born in present day Kochi City on Shikoku. See Taoka Reiun International Symposium held in Kochi, Oct. 21, 2000.

There was also a Forum held in November 2012 in Tokyo to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Taoka Reiun's tr passing.

From Left to right, Christine Levy, me, Takahashi Tasashi (President of the Kochi City Pen Club) and Professor Nishida Masaru.

  • Autobiography, especially autobiographies by twentieth-century Japanese women, for example, Takamure Itsue, Fukuda Hideko, Sata Ineko, Nishikado Tamie, Chiba Atsuko, Kora Tomi, Atsugi Taka, Fukunaga Misao, Oku Mumeo, Sawachi Hisae, Kishino Junko and Takai Toshio. An essay on Atsugi Taka in the online journal Intersections can be found here.

  • My book, Telling Lives: Female Self-Writing in Modern Japan, was published by University of Hawai'i Press in July 2004. It includes translations from the autobiographies of Oku Mumeo, Takai Toshio, Nishi Kiyoko, Sata Ineko and Fukunaga Misao. To order, click

    here

    .

  • TL

  • This book was recognized by the Western Association of Women Historians with the Penny Kanner Prize for best book, 2006.

  • I also published a sequel of sorts, Changing Lives: The 'Postwar' in Japanese Women's Autobiographies and Memoirs which is published as part of the Association of Asian Studies," series in 2013. It deals with postwar Japanese women's lives and features the autobiographies of Shinya Eiko, Okabe Itsuko, Sawachi Hisae, Yoshitake Teruko, Kishino Junko and Kanamori Toshie among others.

Asia Past and Present

 

The AAS Press also published my newest book, The Turn Against the Modern: The Critical Essays of Taoka Reiun (1870-1912) (To order, see (Loftus,TurnAgainstModern) in August 2017. It is study of a late Meiji social and literary critic whom I first encountered in my dissertation research in ther early 1970s. I returned to his writings again at the end of my career and I found that my respect for his work had only grown. He felt that Japan's uncritical adoration of all things western and modern was missplaced. Reading ancient Indian and Chinese philosophy convinced Reiun that knowledge about the human experience should not be limited to the scientific understanding of objective reality. Instead, inner wisdom, intuitive or direct knowing, and subjective understanding need to have their place alongside the rational, emipirical, experimental approach of modern science.

R cover

From the Back cover:

"This study vividly brings to life an overlooked contrarian whose writings tell us that Japan's modernization process was much more complex and controversial than the standard "Meiji progress narrativer" would have us believe. Taoka Reiun comes through this exhausively researched study as a powerful critic who thought capitalist materialism had robbed Japan of its soul..."

--James L. Huffman, Emeritus Professor, Wittenberg University

"Ron Loftus pushes us to think beyond and outside the supposedly universal fold of Western modernity...Situated in the larger realm of ideas in Meiji Japan and its wider world, this account also offers an excellent introduction to the intellectual life of perhaps the most ctitical period of Japan's modern experience."

--Sho Konishi, St. Anthony College, Oxford

 

For Selected list of publications on autobiography,

click here

 

Prompt #5

 

Some Related Web pages:

AAS Home Page

ASPAC Home Page

Japan Studies Association

Resources for Women's Studies

Hiroshima Archive

; See Photos

here

.

Japanese Links:

Keiko Schneider's Page

,

JPNet

,

Japanese History Links:

Rape of Nanking

Duke University Japanese Studies Resources

WWII Poster Gallery

WWII Japanese Studies at Willamette Home Page

 

 

Hobbies

I used to enjoy playing soccer on the weekends; but given some knee problems, not so much anymore. Now I cycle and take "spin" classes.

I like music; I especially appreciate the

Blues

See Origins

More Blues

The three great Mississippi Delta blues men were

Charley Patton

Eddie "Son" House

 and the great

Robert Johnson;

 

 

 

Blind Willie McTell

 

 

Muddy Waters

 

 

 

 

See the Delta Blues Museum Homepage;

 

I also admire Memphis Minnie, Ida Cox, Skip James,

I find Ry Cooder to be an awesome musician. Same goes for Eric Clapton, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Corey Harris, and Guy Davis.

I am also a huge Bob Dylan fan.