author
Katsuro Hara
1871–1924
A pioneering Japanese historian, he helped introduce Japan’s past to English-language readers through a clear and wide-ranging history published in 1920. His work focused especially on medieval Japan and on explaining the country’s development beyond battles and politics alone.
1 Audiobook
An Introduction to the History of Japan
by Katsuro Hara
About the author
Born in Morioka in 1871, Katsuro Hara was a Japanese historian and scholar of Japanese history. He graduated from the Faculty of History at Tokyo Imperial University in 1896, later taught there and at Kyoto University, and also spent time studying in Europe and the United States.
He is especially remembered for his work on medieval Japan and for An Introduction to the History of Japan (1920), an English-language survey written to help overseas readers understand Japan’s historical development. The book stood out for giving attention not only to military events but also to broader cultural and social change.
Hara died in 1924. Though not a household name today, his writing played an important part in bringing Japanese history to an international audience in the early twentieth century.