Yoshihiko Amino - Legacy and Influence

Legacy and Influence

A prolific historian, Amino produced a published output of at least 486 known titles–ranging from newspaper and magazine interviews and articles, book reviews, dialogues, round-table discussions, and other publications to several hundred original articles and over twenty books that were either monographs or essay collections and several multiple-volume series on historical and ethnographic themes. Wesleyan University Professor of History William Johnston writes that "a complete introduction to the Amino oeuvre would probably require its own book."

Simultaneously, Johnston writes that

Despite his prolific output and stature in Japan, only a handful of papers and only one book (although even that remains unpublished) by Amino have been translated in the English language. As a leading scholar of early modern Japan once told me, everybody talks about Muen, kugai, raku, one of Amino’s most important books, but few have read it. For the most part, one could say the same about much of his work. At least two reasons for this arise from Amino’s work itself. One is that much of it has a highly specialized focus on medieval Japan, and another is the context in which his work is read. Many of his essays and monographs focus like a micro laser on the minutiae of landholding patterns, forms of taxation, local power relations, changes in legal codes, the reading and interpretation of documents, and similar specialized topics, and as a consequence even in Japan only specialists find them compelling reading. And while much of his later work is compelling to a large segment of the Japanese reading public, it is less so to a general audience outside Japan. This is especially true for his work on issues concerning Japanese ethnic origins, the tennø, rice cultivation and consumption, geography, and other topics... Finally, although much of his work would certainly be of interest to students and scholars of Japanese history outside Japan, the shortage of translations remains an obstacle.