Education
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Ph.D. in History and East Asian Languages
1981
HARVARD COLLEGE
A.B. in East Asian Studies, summa cum laude
1975
INTER-UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR JAPANESE LANGUAGE STUDIES
1973-74
Teaching Experience
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Lee and Juliet Folger Fund Professor of History
2002-present
Professor of History
1995-02
DUKE UNIVERSITY
Professor of History
1991-95
Associate Professor of History
1987-91
Assistant Professor of History
1985-87
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Assistant Professor of History
1981-85
Books
2019 A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present. 4th ed. New York: Oxford University Press.
2018 創発する日本へ:ポスト「失われた20年」のデッサン. Tokyo: Koubundou. [Co-editor with Kazuhiro Takii]
2013 ミシンと日本の近代:消費者の創出 (Mishin to Nihon no Kindai: Shouhisha no Soushutsu). Translated by Kaori Oshima. Tokyo: Misuzu Shobō. [Japanese translation of Fabricating Consumers: The Sewing Machine in Modern Japan (2011)]
2013 A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford University Press.
2012 日本労使関係史 1853-2010 (Nihon roshi kankei shi 1853-2010). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. [Japanese translation of The Evolution of Labor Relations in Japan, 1985-1955 (1985) with two additional chapters covering the period from the 1960s to the present]
2011 Fabricating Consumers: The Sewing Machine in Modern Japan. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
2008 A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press.
2007 日本人が知らない松坂メジャー革命 (Nihonjin ga shiranai Matsuzaka mejaa kakumei) [Matsuzaka’s Unknown Major League Revolution]. Tokyo: Asahi Shinsho.
2002 A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present. New York: Oxford University Press. [Translations published in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean]
2000 Historical Perspectives on Contemporary East Asia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Co-editor with Merle Goldman]
1998 The Wages of Affluence: Labor and Management in Postwar Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
1993 Postwar Japan as History. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. [Editor; Japanese translation published by Misuzu Shobo, 2002]
1991 Labor and Imperial Democracy in Prewar Japan. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. [Fairbank Prize of American Historical Association (1991) and Arisawa Hiromi Prize Finalist (1992)]
1985 The Evolution of Labor Relations in Japan: Heavy Industry, 1853-1955. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Other Major Publications
2022 "The Potential of disaster digital archives in disaster education: The case of the Japan disasters digital archive (JDA) and its geo-location functions." Co-authored with Julia Gerster, Sebastien Boret, Ryo Morimoto, and Akihiro Shibayama. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 77, July 2022.
2021 “The Puzzle of Vaccine Hesitancy in Japan.” Co-authored with Michael Reich. Journal of Japanese Studies 47, no.2. [Japanese translation, “日本におけるワクチン不信を巡る謎,” published in 医学のあゆみ, 2021]
2019 “Dark Tourism and the History of Imperial and Contemporary Japan.” Special feature of The Asia-Pacific Journal Japan Focus 17 (6), no. 1.
2018 “Social Conflict and Control, Protest and Repression.” In 1914-1981-Online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, edited by Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Kenne, Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson. Berlin: Freie Universität Berlin.
2017 “中村正則と日本の環太平洋史・環戦史 (Nakamura Masanori in the Trans-Pacific and Transwar).” 歴史学研究 960: 23-28.
2017 “Ideologies of State, Market, and Gender from High Growth to ‘Lost Decades'.” In The Lost Two Decades and the Transformation of Japanese Society. International Research Center for Japanese Studies. [Japanese translation, “高度成長から「失われた二十年」 へ ― 国家・市場・ジェンダーのイデオロギー ―,” published in日本研究, 2016 and 創発する日本へ:ポスト「失われた20年」のデッサン, 2018]
2017 “New and Enduring Dual Structures of Employment in Japan: The Rise of Non-Regular Labor, 1980s-2010s.” Social Science Japan Journal 20, no. 1: 9-36. [ISS-OUP Prize (2017) for the most outstanding article of the year in the Social Science Japan Journal]
2016 “Introduction: The Global E.P. Thompson.” Co-authored with Rudi Batzell, Sven Beckert and Gabriel Winant. Special issue of International Review of Social History 61, no. 1: 1-9.
2015 “E. P. Thompson, Politics and History: Writing Social History Fifty Years after The Making of the English Working Class.” Co-authored with Rudi Batzell, Sven Beckert and Gabriel Winant. Special issue of Journal of Social History 48, no. 4: 753-758.
2015 “Making Sense of the Lost Decades: Workplaces and Schools, Men and Women, Young and Old, Rich and Poor.” In Examining Japan’s Lost Decades, edited by Yoichi Funabashi and Barak Kushner. London: Routledge.
2012 “Consumption, Consumerism, and Japanese Modernity.” In The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption, edited by Frank Trentmann. New York: Oxford University Press.
2012 “Like Bamboo Shoots after the Rain: The Growth of a Nation of Dressmakers and Consumers.” In The Historical Consumer: Consumption and Everyday Life in Japan, 1850-2000, edited by Penelope Francks and Janet Hunter. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
2009 “Selling the American Way: The Singer Sales System in Japan, 1900-1938.” Business History Review 82, no. 4.
2007 “Consumption, Leisure and the Middle Class in Transwar Japan.” Social Science Japan Journal 10, no. 1: 1-21.
2006 “From Sewing Machines to Credit Cards: Consumer Credit in 20th Century Japan.” In The Ambivalent Consumer: Questioning Consumption in East Asia and the West, edited by Sheldon Garon and Patricia L. Maclachlan. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
2006 “消費、生活、娯楽の「貫戦史」(A ‘Transwar’ History of Consumption, Daily Life, and Leisure).” In 日常生活の中の総力戦 (Total War in the Midst of Daily Life), edited by Aiko Kurasawa, Tooru Sugihara, Ryuichi Narita, Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Daizaburo Yui, and Yutaka Yoshida. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.
2002 “The Short Happy Life of the Japanese Middle Class.” In Social Contracts Under Stress: The Middle Classes of America, Europe, and Japan at the Turn of the Century, edited by Olivier Zunz, Leonard Schoppa, and Nobuhiro Hiwatari. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
1999 “世紀末日本のナショナリズム (Nationalism, Past and Present).” Asahi Shimbun, 30 November 1999.
1998 "Taking Japanese Studies Seriously." In The Postwar Developments of Japanese Studies in the United States, edited by Helen Hardacre. Leiden: Brill, 387-405.
1997 “Managing the Japanese Household: The New Life Movement in Postwar Japan.” Social Politics 3, no. 2: 245-283.
1996 “Conditions for the Disappearance of the Japanese Working-Class Movement.” In Putting Class in Its Place: Worker Identities in East Asia, edited by Elizabeth J. Perry. Berkeley, CA: Institute of East Asian Studies.
1994 “Luttes pour pouvoir dans les ateliers: ouvriers et direction dans la sidérurgie des années 50 au Japon.” Annales 49, no. 3 : 511-540.
1993 “Contests for the Workplace.” In Postwar Japan as History, edited by Andrew Gordon. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
1989 “The Business Lobby and Bureaucrats in Labor, 1911-1945.” In Managing Industrial Enterprise: Cases from Japan's Prewar Experience, edited by William Wray. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University Press.
1989 “Araki Toichiro and the Shaping of Labor Management.” In Japanese Management in Historical Perspective, edited by Tsunehiko Yui and Keiishiro Nakagawa. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press.
1988 “The Crowd and Politics in Tokyo, 1905-1918.” Past and Present 121: 141-170. [Japanese translation, “戦前日本の大衆政治行動と意識を探って – 東京における民衆騒擾の研究,” published in 歴史学研究, 1987]
1987 “The Right to Work in Japan: Labor and the State in the Depression.” Social Research 54, no. 2: 247-272.
1986 “戦前南葛地域における労働組合の展開 (The Development of the Union Movement in the Prewar Nankatsu Area).” 大原社会問題研究所雑誌 326, no. 1: 1-17.
Translations
1997 Kazuo, Nimura. The Ashio Riot of 1907: A Social History of Mining in Japan. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. [Editor, and translator with Terry Boardman]
1996 Kumazawa, Nakoto. Portraits of the Japanese Workplace: Labor Movements, Workers, and Mangers. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. [Editor, and translator with Mikiso Hane]
1992 Yamamoto, Tetsuji. “Theoretical Displacement of Social Sciences from Chartier to Foucault: Beyond Postmodernism.” Iichiko Intercultural 4.
Recent Professional and Administrative Activities
Member, Social Science Research Council Abe Fellowship Selection Committee
2018-present
Acting Director, Harvard-Yenching Institute, Harvard University
2017-present
Acting Director, Asia Center, Harvard University
2016-17
Member, Japan Foundation American Advisory Committee
2016-present
Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
2014-present
Co-Director, Japan Disaster Digital Archive Project, Harvard University
2011-present
Director, Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, Harvard University
2011-12
Chair, Department of History, Harvard University
2004-07
Director, Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, Harvard University
1998-04
Head Tutor, East Asian Studies, Harvard University
1998-00
Member, North East Asia Council, Association for Asian Studies (elected position)
1994-97
Member, Joint Committee on Japanese Studies, Social Science Research Council
1993-96
Member, Asian/Pacific Studies Executive Committee, Duke University
1993-94
Contact Information
CGIS South Building, S236
1730 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA, 02138
Tel: 617-496-4729
Fax: 617-496-8083
Email: agordon [at] fas.harvard.edu
CV PDF: Andrew Gordon_CV May 2022