Faculty and Staff

Curriculum Vitae

Ronald P. Toby

Department of History
University of Illinois
810 South Wright Street
Urbana, Illinois 61801
e-mail: rptoby@uiuc.edu

Department of Korean Culture
Faculty of Letters
University of Tokyo
7-3-1 Hongô, Bunkyo-ku
Tokyo 113 Japan

Ronald P. Toby, a historian of early modern Japan and East Asia, is Professor of History, East Asian Studies, and Anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was educated at Columbia University, where he received his B.A. in History and Oriental Studies in 1965, his M.A. in Korean History in 1974, and his Ph.D. in Japanese History in 1977. He studied at Waseda University, Tokyo, in 1966-67, and has been a research scholar at Tokyo University's Historiographical Institute, at the National History Compilation Committee in Seoul. Toby taught at Columbia University (1972-73) and the University of California, Berkeley (1977-78), before joining the faculty of the University of Illinois in 1978, where he holds appointments in the departments of History, East Asian Languages & Cultures, and Anthropology; he was named a University Scholar in 1986. He has been a visiting professor at Keio University (1984-85), and the Institute for Research in the Humanities, Kyoto University (1995-96), and has held numerous research fellowships, including grants from Fulbright-Hays, Japan Foundation, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and National Endowment for the Humanities.  He was Head of the Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures, 1996-2000.  Toby is on leave in Tokyo, Japan, 2000-2002, where he holds an appointment at Tokyo University as Professor in the Faculty of Letters.  He will return to Illinois beginning AY 2002-03.

Research Interests

Toby’s current research focuses on notions of ethnicity and identity, at the intersection of cultural history, ethnohistory, and international relations:  His main project examines the ways Japanese of the early-modern era constructed and reproduced ethnic and cultural identity through representation of the Other-peoples beyond Japan’s borders, border peoples like the Ainu and Ryukyuans, inner aliens like the eta (pariahs), etc.-and asserted difference from Other in popular culture.  A corrolary project investigates the representation of the spatial boundaries of Japan in early modern mapping practices-the margins of what are “Japan” and “the Japanese” in both official and popular representation. He is particularly interested in issues of visual representation and iconography, and the problem of reading the visual as text. He has published widely, in both English and Japanese, on the history of Japanese-Korean relations in the early modern era, on the international roots of Japanese ideology and politics, on popular culture, identity and ethnicity, and on credit and banking in early-modern Japan.

Teaching Interests

Premodern Japanese history; Korean history. Courses Toby has taught include graduate proseminars on theoretical and methodological issues in the study of “East Asia”; undergraduate surveys of Japanese and Korean history; introduction to Japanese culture; advanced undergraduate courses in premodern Japanese history; graduate research seminars and readings courses in premodern Japanese history, daily life and popular culture; comparative history.

Selected Publications

Books

1984 State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan: Asia in the Development of the Tokugawa Bakufu. A Study of the East Asian Institute of Columbia University. Princeton University Press.

  • Paperback edition, Stanford University Press (1991).
  • Japanese edition: Kinsei Nihon no kokka keisei to gaikô  (Foreign relations and formation of the state in early-modern Japan).  A. Hayami, Y. Nagazumi, & H. Kawakatsu, tr. (Sôbunsha, 1990).

1989 Great Historians, from Antiquity to 1800: A Biographical Dictionary. Regional Editor, Far East; Member, Editorial Committee. Greenwood Press.

1991 Great Historians of the Modern Age. Regional Editor for Asia & Member of the Editorial Committee. Greenwood Press.

1994 Gyôretsu to misemono (Parades and entertainments), with Kuroda Hideo. Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha (Asahi Newspaper Company).

1996 Nihon e no yuigon (A testament for Japan), with Shiba Ryôtarô, et al., Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha (Asahi Newspaper Company).

Articles and Essays

1972 “Education in Korea under the Japanese: Attitudes and Manifestations,” in Occasional Papers on Korea, 1: 55-64.

1975 “Korean-Japanese Diplomacy in 1711: Sukchong’s Court and the Shogun’s Title,” in Chôsen gakuhô (Korean Studies), 74: 1-26.

1977 “Shoki Tokugawa gaikô ni okeru ‘sakoku’ no ichizuke: bakufu seitôsei kakuritsu o chûshin ni” (“Seclusion” in early Tokugawa foreign policy), in Edo jidai no atarashii shizô o motomete (Toward a new historical image of the Edo period), ed., Shakai Keizai-shi Gakkai (Ass’n. for Soc. & Econ. Hist,), (Tôyô Keizai Shinpôsha): 21-39.

1977 “Reopening the Question of Sakoku: Diplomacy in the Legitimation of the Tokugawa Bakufu,” Journal of Japanese Studies, 3, 2 (Summer): 323-364.

1985 “Contesting the Centre: International Sources of Japanese National Identity,” in The International HistoryReview, 7, 3 (Aug.): 347-363.

1985 “Why Leave Nara? Kanmu and the Transfer of the Capital,” in Monumenta Nipponica, 40, 3 (Autumn):  331-347.

1985 “Kinsei ni okeru ‘Nihon-gata ka’i-kan’ to higashi Ajia no kokusai kankei” (East Asian international   relations and the early-modern notion of a “Japanese-style civilized/barbarian dichotomy”), in Nihon rekishi (Japanese history), 463 (Dec.): 43-60. Tr., Satô Masayuki.

1986 “Carnival of the Aliens: Korean Embassies in Edo Period Art and Popular Culture,” in Monumenta Nipponica, 41, 4: 415-456.

1989 “‘Minmatsu Shinsho Nihon kisshi’ ni kansuru Tachibana monjo” (The Tachibana letter and late-Ming/early-Qing Chinese requests for Japanese military aid), in Nihon rekishi (Japanese history), 98 (Nov.): 94-100.

1990 “Edo jidai no ikoku-kan oyobi ijin-zô” (Views of foreign lands; notions of Other in the Edo period), in Tekijuku (Tekijuku journal [Osaka University]), 23: 10-19.

1990 “Leaving the Closed Country: New Models for Early-modern Japan,” in Trans. International Conf. of Orientalists in Japan, 35: 213-221.

1991 “Ikinai-shi no naka no Nihon kokushi: mokka no kadai” (Japanese national history in regional history: an agenda), in Ajia kôeki-ken to Nihon kôgyô-ka, 1500-1900 (The Asian trading region and Japan’s industrialization), ed. Kawakatsu Heita & Hamashita Takeshi. (Libro). pp. 232-242.

1991 “Both a Borrower and a Lender Be: From Village Moneylender to Rural Banker in the Tempo Era,” in Monumenta Nipponica, 46, 4 (Winter): 483-512.

1992 “Shin-hakken no Tenka matsuri emaki: Ryûgasaki-shi Rekishi Minzoku Shiryôkan shôzô Kanda Myôjin sairei emaki no shôkai,” with Kuroda Hideo, in Ryûgasaki Shishi kenkyû (Ryûgasaki historical studies), 6 (March): 1-39.

1992 “Henbô suru sakoku gainen” (Changing notions of “seclusion”), in Kokusai kôryû (International cultural exchange), 15, 3 (Oct): 22-31.

1993 “Changing Credit in Nineteenth-century Japan,” in Local Suppliers of Credit in the Third World, 1750-1960, ed., Gareth Austin & Kaoru Sugihara (The Macmillan Company & St. Martin’s Press): 55-90.

1994 “The Indianness of Iberia and Changing Japanese Iconographies of Other,” in Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reporting, and Reflecting on the Encounters between Europeans and Other Peoples in the Early Modern Era, ed. Stuart Schwartz (Cambridge University Press), pp. 323-351.

1996 “Puroto-kôgyô-ki ni okeru kin’yû no henbô: ginkô-teki keiei no taidô” (The transformation of finance and Japanese protoindustrialization), in Jinbun gakuhô (Journal of the humanities), vol. 78 (March): 85-123.

1996 “Chôsenjin gyôretsu-zu no hatsumei: Edozu byôbu, shinshutsu Rakuchû rakugai-zu byôbu to kinsei shoki no kaiga ni okeru ‘Chôsenjin-zô’ e” (Inventing the Korean parade: the Edo Screen, the newly-discovered Kyoto screen, and the search for an image of “Koreans”in early-Edo painting), in Shin Kisu & Nakao Hiroshi, eds., Taikei Chôsen tsûshinshi (Korean missions, an anthology), Akashi Shoten, vol. 1: 120-129; plates, pp. 42-45; 51-53.

1996-97 A series of twelve historical essays appeared in Issatsu no hon, vol. 1, nos. 2-12; vol. 2, no. 1, under the general title, “Miyako no ijin” (Alien in the capital), focusing on themes of alterity and marginality in Japanese history.

1997 “Kinsei Nihonjin no etonosu ninshiki” (Early-modern Japanese ethnic consciousness), in Yamauchi Masayuki & Yoshida Motoo, ed., Nihon imêji kôsaku:  Ajia Taiheiyô no toposu (Inter-implicated Japanese images:  The Asia-Pacific topos).  (Tokyo University Press, 1997): 122-132.

1997 “‘Ketôjin’ no tôjô o megutte:  kinsei nihon no taigai ninshiki/tasha-kan no ichi sokumen” (On the appearance of the “Hairy barbarian”:  ideas of Other and imagination of the foreign in early-modern Japan), in Kyôkai no Nihonshi (A history of Japan at the boundary), ed., Murai Shôsuke, Satô Shin, and Yoshida Nobuyuki (Yamakawa Shuppan):  245-291.

1998 “Utamaro no ekizochikku to erochikku” (The erotic and exotic in Utamaro), in Ukiyoe o yomu 5:  Utamaro (Reading ukiyo-e 5:  Utamaro), ed. Asano Shûgô and Yoshida Nobuyuki (Asahi Shinbunsha): 47-59.

1998 “Imagining and Imaging ‘Anthropos’ in Early-modern Japan,” in Visual Anthropology Review, 14, 3 (Spring-Summer):  19-44.

1999 “Jinrui e no manazashi:  kinsei Nihon no sôzôryoku to imêji no naka no gaikokujin” (Gazing at “man”:  the Other in the early-modern Japanese imaginary), in Iwanami kôzai sekai rekishi (Iwanami world history), vol. 13 (Tokyo:  Iwanami Shoten).

Documentary Video

1995 Foreigners, Fierce and Festive, video documentary. (Richmond, IN: Media Production Group).