Mark Ravina is a scholar of early modern Japanese history, and Associate Professor of History at Emory University

Emory University

Emory University is a private research university in metropolitan Atlanta, located in the Druid Hills section of unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, United States. The university was founded as Emory College in 1836 in Oxford, Georgia by a small group of Methodists and was named in honor of...

, where he has taught since 1991. Outside of academic circles, he is likely most well known for his book The Last Samurai: the Life and Battles of Saigō Takamori

Saigo Takamori

was one of the most influential samurai in Japanese history, living during the late Edo Period and early Meiji Era. He has been dubbed the last true samurai.-Early life:...

, published in 2004.

Much of Ravina's scholarly work centers on notions of national identity and state-building in early modern Japan. Land and Lordship in Early Modern Japan, published in 1999, and thus far his only other book besides The Last Samurai, centers on this topic, as do a number of journal articles and talks given by Ravina. He is one of only a few scholars actively working to challenge those who equate the Tokugawa shogunate's authority with the "state" in Japan in this period. Working off of the ideas and terms coined by Takeshi Mizubayashi

Takeshi Mizubayashi

' is a professor in the Graduate School of Law at Hitotsubashi University, and professor emeritus of Tokyo Metropolitan University. His field of specialty is the history of law in Japan, though he is perhaps most well-known for his arguments regarding the political organization of Tokugawa...

, Ravina explores the notion of a "compound state" in which the daimyō

Daimyo

is a generic term referring to the powerful territorial lords in pre-modern Japan who ruled most of the country from their vast, hereditary land holdings...

(feudal lords) are not merely governors in the service of the Tokugawa regime, but rulers of semi-independent states within the greater Tokugawa state. This alternative to the traditional view of a monolithic, unified Edo period

Edo period

The , or , is a division of Japanese history which was ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family, running from 1603 to 1868. The political entity of this period was the Tokugawa shogunate....

 Japanese state invites not only rethinking of a great many aspects of Edo period history, but also engages with a wider ongoing scholarly discourse on the notions of "nation" and "state" in general. Numerous scholars, including Luke S. Roberts, Ronald Toby

Ronald Toby

Ronald P. Toby is an American historian, academic, writer and Japanologist.-Career:As a university professor, Toby's teaching experience has included the University of California at Berkeley, the Keio University and the University of Tokyo....

 and John Whitney Hall

John Whitney Hall

John Whitney Hall , the Tokyo-born son of missionaries in Japan, grew up to become a pioneer in the field of Japanese studies and one of the most respected historians of Japan of his generation. His life work was recognized by the Japanese government...

 have made reference to his work, engaging with it in their own pursuits of a reexamination of notions of statehood and national identity in the Tokugawa period. The influence of this new discourse on statehood is evident in the use of the plural "Japanese States" in the title of the newest book by Timon Screech

Timon Screech

Timon Screech is a professor in the history of art at the School of Oriental and African Studies , University of London. He is a specialist in the art and culture of early modern Japan....

, a specialist on Edo period art history: The Shogun's Painted Culture: Fear and Creativity in the Japanese States, 1760-1829.

Land and Lordship was translated into Japanese and released as Meikun no satetsu in 2004.

Ravina also served as a guest consultant in two documentary films about the samurai and Tokugawa Japan in 2003, following upon the success of the film The Last Samurai

The Last Samurai

The Last Samurai is a 2003 American epic drama film directed and co-produced by Edward Zwick, who also co-wrote the screenplay based on a story by John Logan. The film was inspired by a project developed by writer and director Vincent Ward, who had previously filmed the movie in 1990, starring...

. The title and subject of his book on Saigō Takamori, upon whom the film's central character Lord Katsumoto was based, was purely coincidence.

Having published a number of articles on state-building and national identity within Tokugawa Japan, Ravina is now turning towards addressing the subject as it pertains to Tokugawa Japan in a more global context.

He earned his BA from Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 in 1983, and his MA and PhD from Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

in 1988 and 1991 respectively.

Books

• Land and Lordship in Early Modern Japan. Stanford University Press, 1999. (ISBN 978-0-8047-2898-0)
• The Last Samurai: the Life and Battles of Saigō Takamori. John Wiley & Sons, 2004. (ISBN 978-0-471-08970-4)

Articles

• State-building and Political Economy in Early-modern Japan. The Journal of Asian studies. 54, no. 4, (1995): 997
• Japanese state-making in Global Context: World culture and Meiji Japan. in Richard Boyd and Tak-wing Ngo (eds.) State Making in Asia 2006. (ISBN 978-0-415-34611-5)
• State-making in Global Context:Japan in a World of Nation-States. in Joshua Fogel (ed.) The Teleology of the Modern Nation-State: Japan and China. U Penn Press, 2004. (ISBN 978-0-8122-3820-4)

External links

• Faculty page at Emory University