Portland State University Professor and Director of the Center for Japanese Studies Awarded Recipient of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies’ Grant

Dr. Ken Ruoff, Professor in the modern history of Japan and Director of the Center for Japanese Studies, has received a major grant from the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) in Kyoto to lead a team research project on the topic of the Far Right in Postwar Japan in a Global Context, during the 2026-27 academic year. The team includes 14 researchers representing nine universities and research centers in Japan.

Dr. Kazuhiro Takii of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies remarked: "We are very pleased to be able to invite Portland State University’s Professor Ken Ruoff as the Nichibunken Team Research Group’s sponsored foreign researcher for the 2026-27 academic year."

The project team includes not only numerous experts on Japan, but also Japanese experts on the far right in India, the United States, and Europe.

This grant was many years in the making. A Faculty Development Grant at Portland State provided seed money that led to this much larger grant application. Additionally, fellow faculty in the History Department at Portland State loomed large in helping Dr. Ruoff. Professor David Horowitz, an expert on U.S. History, helped identify nearly 100 books and other readings for Ruoff to get up to speed on the postwar far right in the United States. And Professor Joseph Bohling did the same for postwar France.

The extended Center for Japanese Studies network also loomed large. Nobu Suzuki, a reporter for the Tokyo shinbun (Tokyo's main newspaper) who Dr. Ruoff first met when Mr. Suzuki came to cover PSU's performance of the kabuki performance "Revenge of the 47 Loyal Samurai" (2015), facilitated Dr. Ruoff's research. Suzuki, after inquiring of many journalists, provided Ruoff with a list of the ten most important books to the far right in Japan in the postwar era, and a corresponding list of the ten books most important to the far left in postwar Japan. In many ways, it takes a village helping ahead of time for a scholar to earn a major grant.

Portland State University recently named Dr. Ruoff to a "Portland Professorship," the highest-level professorship at the university. His first book, The People's Emperor: Democracy and the Japanese Monarchy, in translation was awarded Japan's equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize in 2004, and his second book, Imperial Japan at Its Zenith, received the Frances Fuller Victor Award for General Nonfiction (best work of nonfiction by an Oregon author), Oregon Book Awards, 2012.