Thomas D. Conlan

Thomas D. Conlan, Professor of East Asian Studies and History (BA Michigan, MA PhD Stanford), has published on topics ranging from the Mongol Invasions of Japan and the wars of the fourteenth century. His research interests include warfare, political legitimacy and ritual, ethnicity, economy and trade, and social change in Japan. Currently, he is researching mining and the importance of precious metals as commodities in Japan and Korea, 500-1700. He has written nine monographs, most recently Samurai and the Warrior Culture of Japan: A Sourcebook 471-1877 (Hackett, 2022), Kings in All but Name: The Lost History of Ōuchi Rule in Japan 1350-1569 (Oxford, 2024), where he provides a new understanding of premodern Japanese history, showing that it was a multiethnic state, economically based on mining and trade, and Kinkakuji and Kitayama: Space, Place, Monuments and Memory in Japan 1222-1994 (Brill, 2025). He has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, Fulbright, NEH, Japan Foundation Japanese Studies, and the Japanese Ministry of Education and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.