Ichirō Inaba
Ichirō Inaba was a Japanese historian of China and professor emeritus at Kwansei Gakuin University.
Career
Ichirō Inaba graduated from the Kyoto University Graduate School of Letters in 1966. He studied under Ichisada Miyazaki, and his doctoral thesis was on official historians of the Six Dynasties. Following graduation, he lectured at a university for a year and two months before landing an assistant job at Ritsumeikan University, where he taught Chinese Historical Thought and Pre-Modern Chinese History after 1977. In October 1978, he visited China with a group of historians and archaeologists.He was promoted to full professor in 1979, and a year later he joined the School of Humanities at Kwansei Gakuin University. He stayed there for over two decades before retiring in 2005.
Works
Inaba's research focused on the historical and economic views of Chinese statesmen, historians and philosophers, including Sang Hongyang, Sima Guang, Mozi, Mencius, Xunzi, Han Fei, Yuan Jue, and Zhang Xuecheng. He wrote a chapter for Chinese Medieval History Research and contributed several entries to the western reference book A Sung Bibliography.His own books include Chinese Historical Thought: A Study of Jizhuanti and A Study of the History of Chinese Historiography, which collected his papers from several decades.
He also authored a travel photography book titled Traveling in Jiangnan: Suzhou, Hangzhou, Shanghai, featuring photos from the Jiangnan region of China.