was a

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

academic, historian, author and professor emeritus of the Kyoto University. He was considered a specialist in modern Japanese history. He was also known as a "progressive historian" and a "Marxist historian."

Early life

Inoue was born in Kochi Prefecture. He studied at the

University of Tokyo , abbreviated as or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project b ...

; and his doctoral thesis was "The History of Modern Reform."

Iwanami shoten is a Japanese publishing company based in Tokyo.Louis Frédéric, ''Japan Encyclopedia'', Harvard University Press, 2005, p. 409. Iwanami Shoten was founded in 1913 by Iwanami Shigeo. Its first major publication was Natsume Sōseki's novel '' ...

Inoue bio notes
/ref> He was awarded his Ph.D. in 1936.

Career

In 1954, Inoue joined the faculty of the University of Kyoto as an associate professor at the Institute of Humanities. In 1961, he was named a professor. He continued as a member of the Kyoto faculty until his retirement in 1977. In his early career, Inoue established himself as a

Marxist historian Marxist historiography, or historical materialist historiography, is an influential school of historiography. The chief tenets of Marxist historiography include the centrality of social class, social relations of production in class-divided so ...

, publishing works on such subjects as the Japanese imperial system and

buraku is a name for a low-status social group in Japan. It is a term for ethnic Japanese people with occupations considered as being associated with , such as executioners, undertakers, slaughterhouse workers, butchers, or tanners. During Japan's ...

. In his later years, Inoue worked to expand the number of academic exchanges between Japan and China, and led a movement seeking solidarity with Asian nations. He also published works on the subject of the

Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute The Senkaku Islands dispute, or Diaoyu Islands dispute, is a territorial dispute over a group of uninhabited islands known as the Senkaku Islands in Japan, the Diaoyu Islands in the People's Republic of China (PRC), and Tiaoyutai Islands in t ...

that sided with the Chinese claim. Inoue received an honorary degree from the

Chinese Academy of Social Sciences The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) is a Chinese research institute and think tank. The institution is the premier comprehensive national academic research organization in the People's Republic of China for the study in the fields of ...

in 1997.

Inoue's views

Inoue had published a book criticizing the imperial system; and he continued to be critical of the Japanese emperor throughout his life. In a range of topics, his work was often viewed as controversial due to his active protests and lawsuits against the Japanese government. During the Japanese students riots in 1969, Professor Inoue openly supported the students who were demanding the scrapping of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty. Inoue was also very critical of "Japanese militarism" in the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute with China, and had written a number of books on the subject.

Selected works

In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about Kiyoshi Inoue, OCLC/

WorldCat WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the O ...

encompasses roughly 100+ works in 200+ publications in 6 languages and 1,000+ library holdings. ;Books * 日本女性史 (1948) * 明治維新 (1951) * 天皇制 (1953) * 新版日本の軍国主義 (1953) * 条約改正: 明治の民族問題 (1955) * 日本近代史 (1956) * 日本の歴史 (1963) * 日本帝国主義の形成 (1968)
釣魚列島的歷史和主權問題
Diaoyu Dao - Li Shi Yu Zhu Quan (1972) * Senkaku Letto/Diaoyu Islands - The Historical Treaties (1972) Daisan Publisher (出版社: 第三書館) (1996/10
「尖閣」列島―釣魚諸島の史的解明 [単行本]
; also hosted i

for online reading (set to Shift-JIS character code), wit

Chinese translation by Ying Hui, Published by Commercial Press Hong Kong (1973
釣魚列島的歷史和主權問題 / 井上清著 ; 英慧譯
. ;Journals

''Historical Research'', February 1972.

Notes

External links