Philip C. Brown
Department of History
Ohio State University
230 West 17th Avenue
Columbus, Ohio 43210-1367
A.

EDUCATION
1981
1976
1971
1969

B.

Ph.D. in History, University of Pennsylvania (Japan, East Asia)
M.A. in History, University of Pennsylvania
M.A. in Education, with Certificate in East Asian Studies, University of Rochester
B.A. in History and Political Science, College of Wooster

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
2010- present
1994-2009
Fall, 2000
1998
1997-98
1990-94
1989-90
1982-90
1988

C.

Professor, The Ohio State University
Associate Professor (1994-2009), The Ohio State University
Visiting Associate Professor, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Visiting Research Professor, Niigata University, College of Humanities
Visiting International Research Professor, Division of Historical
Manuscripts, National Institute of Japanese literature, Tokyo
Assistant Professor, The Ohio State University
Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship, University of Pittsburgh
Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Visiting Professor of History, Duke University

HONORS AND AWARDS
MAJOR EXTERNAL GRANTS AND FELLOWSHIPS
2011

Northeast Asia Council, Association for Asian Studies, Small Conferences
Award, $5,000, “Science, Technology and Medicine in East Asia: Policy,
Practice, and Implications in a Global Context” held in the Mershon Center at Ohio State University on October 7-9, 2011.
2010
Northeast Asia Council, Association for Asian Studies, Small Conferences
Award, Environment and Society in the Japanese Islands — From Prehistory to the Present, $5,000 to partially fund an international conference
to be held in Honolulu, HI, March 29-30, 2011, co-organized with Prof.
Bruce Batten, John F. Oberlin University, Machida (Tokyo), Japan.
2007“Dam Japan! Floods, Landslides and Society in the Modernization of Japan,
From the 19th to 20th Centuries,” National Endowment for the Humanities/Japan-US Friendship Commission Advanced Research in the Social
Sciences on Japan Fellowship, $50,400
2007-2010 “Coping with Disaster: Civil Engineering, Floods and Landslides in the Modernization of Japan,” National Science Foundation Scholars Award(2007-2010), $223,000 (three years)
2007-2008 “Coping with Disaster: Civil Engineering, Floods and Landslides in the Modernization of Japan, ”Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Fellowship(Niigata, Japan)
2002“Man and Environment in Early Modern Japan: Mapping Historical Rural

Philip C. Brown

2001

1997-98

1996
1993
1993
1993
1993

2

Communities,” Grant-in-Aid, Ohio State University College of Humanities.
Travel to Japan to work with GIS specialists at Ritsumeikan University,
Kyoto for one month.
“Man and Environment in Early Modern Japan: Mapping Historical Rural
Communities,” National Science Foundation and Japan Society for thePromotion of Science Short-Term Invitation Research Fellowship, Department of Geography, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan, September 27-November 25.
International Research Scholar, Division of Archives, National Institute of Historical Literature, Tokyo, Japan for six months research at this divisionof the Ministry of Education. NOTE: I am the first person to receive
this honor. About $50,000
American Philosophical Society research grant (research in Japan) $5,000
Fulbright-Hays (CIES), "Public Control and Private Choice: Corporate Land
Tenures and Land Redistribution Systems in Early Modern Echigo"($46,410; research in Japan)
Fulbright-Hays (U.S. Department of Education), "Public Control and Private
Choice: Corporate Land Tenures and Land Redistribution Systems in
Early Modern Echigo" ($45,000; research in Japan)
Japan Foundation, "Public Control and Private Choice: Corporate Land Tenures and Land Redistribution Systems in Modern Japan" ($16,555; research in Japan)
Social Science Research Council, "Public Control and Private Choice: Corporate Land Tenures and Land Redistribution Systems in Early ModernEchigo" ($15,000; research in Japan)
CAREER TOTAL:D.

62

SCHOLARSHIP
1.

PUBLICATIONSBOOKS:
1. Cultivating Commons: Joint Ownership of Arable Land in Early Modern Japan (University of Hawai’i Press, 2011).
2. Central Authority and Local Autonomy in the Formation of Early Modern Japan: The
Case of Kaga Domain, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993.
MAJOR REFEREED PUBLICATIONS:
1. “Arable Land as Commons: Land Reallocation in Early Modern Japan,” Social Science History 30:3 (2006), 431-461.
2. "Corporate Land Tenure in Nineteenth-Century Japan: A GIS Assessment," Historical
Geography 33 (May, 2005), 99-117.
3. "Local History’s Challenge to National Narratives, ”Early Modern Japan: An Interdisciplinary Journal 8:2 (November, 2000), 38-48.
4. "State, Cultivator, Land: Determination of Land Tenures in Early Modern Japan Reconsidered," Journal of Asian Studies 56:2 (May, 1997), 421-444.
5. "Never The Twain Shall Meet: European And Japanese Land Survey Techniques In
Tokugawa Japan," Chinese Science, 9 (1989), pps. 53-79.
6. "The Mismeasure of Land: Land Surveying in the Tokugawa Period," Monumenta
Nipponica, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Summer 1987), pps. 115-55.
CAREER TOTAL: 16

Philip C. Brown

3SELECTED PUBLISHED ESSAYS:
1. “Dam Japan No More! A Half Century of Planning and Protest,” The Environmental
Histories of Europe and Japan, proceedings of the Oxford-Nagoya Environment Seminar, Nagoya University, Nagoya, 2011, pp. 55-68.
2. "Technology Transfer in early 20th Century East Asia: Perspectives on a Comparative
Study (in Japanese) in The East Asian Rim Research Center Annual Report, No. 4,Mar. 2009, pp. 1-6.
3. Philip C. Brown, “Kenkyūsha no gazō riyō taiken: Rekishigaku no genba kara,” (“Researchers’ Experience Using Images: From the Perspective of Historical Research”)
in Yasue Akio and Koide Izumi, eds. Kaigai Nihon kenkyūsha no gazō riyōjijō (Conditions of Image Use by Overseas Japanese Studies Scholars).Tokyo, The North
American Coordinating Council on Japanese Library Resources, 2009, 59-63.
4. “Technology Transfer in Early Twentieth-Century East Asia: Thoughts for a Comparative Research Project,” (In Japanese, “20 seiki zenpan no Higashi Ajia ni okeru gijutsu
idō: Hikaku kenkyū purojekuto e no kōsatsu”), Proceedings, Hanyang University (Korea)/Niigata University International Symposium on Japanese Studies, 2008, 22-27.
5. “Exploring Historical Space and Environments in the History/Social Studies Classroom: A Guest Editorial and Introduction,” The Journal of the Association of History andComputing,
XI:2(August,2008):On-line,refereedjournal:
http://mcel.pacificu.edu/jahc/2008/issue2/
6. "The Controlling Urge? Contours of a Study of Flood and Landslide Management in
the Modernization of Japan," in T.C. Smout, P. Holm, and T. Mizoguchi, eds., The Environmental Histories of Europe and Japan: Proceedings, Nagoya: Graduate Schoolof Environmental Studies, Nagoya University, 2008, pp. 225-240.
7. “Unification, Consolidation and Tokugawa Rule,” Willima Tsutsui, ed., A Companion toJapanese History, Blackwell Publishers, 2007 (chapter 4)
8. “Reflections on Japanese Village Locations, Boundaries and GIS in Historical Research,” Reading Historical Spatial Information from around the World: Studies ofCulture and Civilization Based on Geographic Information Systems Data, International
Symposium 24 (2005), International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Kyoto),
139-154.
9. "Early Modern Japanese Land Redistribution Practices: Their Interest to Overseas
Scholars and the Complications of Understanding Them," ("Warichi seido: soto kara
mita omoshirosa, naka kara mita fukuzatusa"), part of a collaborative research seminarseries, "Nature, Farmers, and Land Taxation in Early Modern Japan", which I organizedfor the Division of Historical Manuscripts, National Institute of Japanese Literature, Tokyo, Shiryōkan kenkyū kiyō, (March, 1999), 161-227.
10. "A Case of Failed Technology Transfer--Land Survey Technology in Early Modern Japan," Senri Ethnological Studies 46 (March, 1998) 83-97.
11. "Dividing the Land: Corporate Agricultural Landholding as an Expression of JapaneseConceptions of Parity and Equity", Kyoto Conference on Japanese Studies (Publishedby the International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Kyoto, Japan and the Japan Foundation) III (1996), pp. 74-81.
12. "Kinsei Nihon ni okeru chūō to chihō: sono chikara kankei no saikōsatsu"("Re-thinking Central-Local Power Relationships in Kinsei Japan") Hokuriku Shigaku(Hokuriku Historical Studies) (April, 1995), 71-79; 87-98.
CAREER TOTAL:63