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 (In Little Need of Divine Intervention) and the wars of the fourteenth century (State of War and From Sovereign to Symbol). 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 Weapons and Fighting Techniques (Amber Press, 2022), 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), where he adopts a typology of intentional monuments, historical monuments, ancient monuments, and timeless monuments to describe how Kinkakuji, the Golden Pavilion, was created, preserved, destroyed, and rebuilt. 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.

Curriculum Vitae

Multimedia Projects

Regaining the Regalia: The Story of Kōzuki Mitsuyoshi and His Daughter Gogo	Mysteries of the Madarajima monjo The Kyoto Princeton Project	Suruga Date Collection The Kyoto Princeton Project
Tannowa Collection The Kyoto Princeton Project	Japanese Documents (Komonjo)​	Scrolls of the Mongol Invasions of Japan
Annotated Mongol Scrolls website	Scrolls of the Heiji Disturbance Version of the Heiji Scrolls using Flash	Kishōmon: Four oaths and five invocations
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The Ōnin War: Visualizing 12 Years of War in Japan, 1465-78	Thatch Roofer and Mayor in Meiji Japan	WW2 Japanese photos

Monographs

1. Kinkakuji and Kitayama: Space, Place, Monuments and Memory in Japan 1222-1994
2. Kings in All but Name: The Lost History of Ōuchi Rule in Japan 1350-1569
3. Samurai and the Warrior Culture of Japan: A Sourcebook, 471-1877
4. From Sovereign to Symbol: An Age of Ritual Determinism in Fourteenth Century Japan
5. State of War: The Violent Order of Fourteenth Century Japan
6. In Little Need of Divine Intervention: Scrolls of the Mongol Invasions of Japan
7. Samurai Warrior Weapons and Fighting Techniques
8. 図説 戦国時代 武器・防具・戦術百科
9. Weapons and Fighting Techniques of the Samurai Warrior 1200-1877