has been the governor of

Shizuoka Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region of Honshu. Shizuoka Prefecture has a population of 3,637,998 and has a geographic area of . Shizuoka Prefecture borders Kanagawa Prefecture to the east, Yamanashi Prefecture to the northea ...

since 2009 and is currently serving his fourth term. He completed his D.Phil at

wolfson college, Oxford Wolfson College () is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Located in north Oxford along the River Cherwell, Wolfson is an all-graduate college with around sixty governing body fellows, in addition to both research and ...

, under Professor

Peter Mathias Peter Mathias, (10 January 1928 – 1 March 2016) was a British economic historian and the former Chichele Professor of Economic History at the University of Oxford. His research focused on the history of industry, business, and technology, ...

and was Professor of

Economics History Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyze ...

Waseda University , abbreviated as , is a private university, private research university in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Founded in 1882 as the ''Tōkyō Senmon Gakkō'' by Ōkuma Shigenobu, the school was formally renamed Waseda University in 1902. The university has numerou ...

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

. He was also Professor of Economics History and Vice Director of the International Research Centre for Japanese Studies in

Kyoto Kyoto (; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the ci ...

and President at Shizuoka University of Arts and culture. He is co-editor of many studies including ''Intra-Asian Trade and Industrialization'' and ''The Evolving Structure of the East Asian Economic System since 1700,'' both published by Routledge. He is opposed to the plan of Tokyo-Nagoya MagLev route in terms of ecological system and water supply.

Career

A former economic historian, Kawakatsu was a professor at the

International Research Center for Japanese Studies The , or Nichibunken (日文研), is an inter-university research institute in Kyoto. Along with the National Institute of Japanese Literature, the National Museum of Japanese History, and the National Museum of Ethnology, it is one of the Nati ...

in Kyoto from 1998 to 2007. Kawakatsu's research on "civilization theory" has been critiqued by historians such as

Tessa Morris-Suzuki Tessa Morris-Suzuki (born 29 October 1951 in England), born as Tessa Morris, is a historian of modern Japan and North Korea. She is Professor in the School of Culture, History and Language, College of Asia and the Pacific, the Australian Nation ...

. Kawakatsu has written numerous books in the

Nihonjinron is a genre of texts that focus on issues of Japanese national and cultural identity. The concept became popular after World War II, with books and articles aiming to analyze, explain, or explore peculiarities of Japanese culture and mentality, u ...

genre of Japanese cultural studies.

References

1948 births Living people Politicians from Shizuoka Prefecture Waseda University alumni Alumni of the University of Oxford Waseda University faculty Governors of Shizuoka Prefecture {{Japan-politician-stub