Tetsuo Najita

Tetsuo "Tets" Najita (奈地田 哲夫, Najita Tetsuo, March 30, 1936 – January 11, 2021) was an American historian.

Biography

A nisei,^[1] Najita was raised in Hawaii. He graduated from Grinnell College in 1958, and was named a Woodrow Wilson Fellow.^[2][3] While in Grinnell, he became a member of Phi Beta Kappa.^[4] Najita completed a doctorate at Harvard University in 1965.^[5]

Upon finishing his studies, Najita began teaching at Carleton College.^[6] He left Carleton in 1966,^[6][7] and became an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin.^[8] In 1969, Najita joined the University of Chicago faculty,^[9] and was later named a Robert S. Ingersolll Distinguished Service Professor in History and East Asian Languages and Civilizations.^[10]

Over the course of his career, Najita received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1981,^[11] and was named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1993.^[12] Grinnell College honored Najita with an alumni award in 1998.^[2] Five years after his retirement from the institution, the University of Chicago inaugurated the Tetsuo Najita Distinguished Lecture series in 2007.^[13]

Najita died at his home in Kamuela, Hawaii, on January 11, 2021, after a long illness.^[14]

Bibliography

• Hara Kei in the Politics of Compromise, 1905-1915 (Harvard University Press, 1967).
• Japan: the Intellectual Foundations of Modern Japanese Politics (Prentice-Hall, 1974).
• Visions of Virtue in Tokugawa Japan: the Kaitokudo Merchant Academy of Osaka (University of Chicago Press, 1987).
• Ordinary Economies in Japan: a Historical Perspective, 1750-1950 (University of California Press, 2009).
• Tokugawa Political Writings, (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
• Japanese Thought in the Tokugawa Period, 1600-1868: Methods and Metaphors, co-edited with Irwin Scheiner, (University of Chicago Press, 1978).
• Conflict in Modern Japanese History: the Neglected Tradition, co-edited with J. Victor Koschmann, (Princeton University Press, 1982).

References

1. Sheridan, K. (2005). Planning Japan's Economic Future. Springer. p. 98. ISBN 978-0-230-59729-7.
2. "Grinnell College alumni award by classes" (PDF). Grinnell College. July 2018.
3. Cavanagh, Lynn; Schuchmann, Mary (2015). Grinnell. Arcadia Publishing. p. 41. ISBN 978-1-4396-5223-7.
4. "Handbook and directory" (PDF). Grinnell College. p. 31.
5. "Tetsuo Najita". University of Chicago. Retrieved 14 August 2018.
6. "Carleton College History Department gallery" (PDF). Carleton College. Retrieved 14 August 2018.
7. "Chronological Faculty List, 1875–present". Carleton College. Retrieved 14 August 2018.
8. Najita, Tetsuo (December 1968). "Inukai Tsuyoshi: Some Dilemmas in Party Development in Pre-World War II Japan". The American Historical Review. 74 (2): 492–510. doi:10.2307/1853674. JSTOR 1853674.
9. "The 2010 Tetsuo Najita Distinguished Lecture in Japanese studies" (PDF). University of Chicago. 2010. Retrieved 14 August 2018.
10. "Tetsuo Najita, Ph.D." University of Chicago. Retrieved 14 August 2018.
11. "Tetsuo Najita". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved 14 August 2018.
12. "American Academy of Arts & Sciences". University of Chicago. Retrieved 14 August 2018.
13. "Najita Distinguished Lecture Series in Japanese Studies". University of Chicago. Retrieved 14 August 2018.
14. "Association for Asian Studies: Tetsuo Najita (1936-2021)". Retrieved 28 January 2021.