Professor Yamamoto Tatsuro and the Masterpiece Research on Annam History

Abstract

Although prior to World War II there had already appeared a number of well-known scholars in Japan conducting research on Vietnam, the most outstanding figure was Professor Yamamoto Tatsuro (山本達郎: 1910–2001). Yamamoto Tatsuro graduated from the University of Tokyo, Japan, and for a time worked at the École Française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO) in Hanoi, where he was influenced by the French Orientalist school. In 1950, he published his work Research on Annam History (安南史研究), which established his reputation as one of the leading scholars of Vietnamese studies in Japan. In this article, we introduce the representative research works of Professor Yamamoto Tatsuro and assess his position in the field of Vietnam studies in Japan. In particular, we
focus on an in-depth analysis of the values of Research on Annam History, a masterpiece of Japanese East Asian.