{"id":2172,"date":"2026-01-05T10:42:42","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T01:42:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsletter.nichibun.ac.jp\/?post_type=research&p=2172"},"modified":"2026-01-05T10:42:42","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T01:42:42","slug":"the-academic-significance-of-the-toma-seita-collection-2","status":"publish","type":"research","link":"https:\/\/newsletter.nichibun.ac.jp\/en\/research\/2172\/","title":{"rendered":"The Academic Significance of the T\u014dma Seita Collection"},"content":{"rendered":"

In October 2025, Nichibunken approved the launch of a research project on the T\u014dma Seita and Ishimoda Sh\u014d archives, and work on the project has just begun. The project will digitize the books, letters, photographs, and diaries of T\u014dma and Ishimoda entrusted to Professor Isomae Jun\u2019ichi of Nichibunken by the bereaved families. The plan is to begin with the digitization of the T\u014dma collection.<\/p>\r\n

T\u014dma Seita was born in Hiroshima in 1913. A historian of ancient Japan, in the postwar period he was at one point the darling of the historical community. With Ishimoda Sh\u014d, he spearheaded the national historical movement and led debates on the heroic age, such as over Yamato Takeru. When the national historical movement faltered, T\u014dma removed himself from the central debates in history, and became something of a \u201cforgotten historian.\u201d Kumamoto was where T\u014dma chose to make a new beginning. Invited to become a professor at Kumamoto University of Commerce (now Kumamoto Gakuen University) in 1971, he was an active researcher despite having already reached the age of sixty. As a central figure in the Kumamoto Modern History Research Society, he dedicated himself to advancing the study of Kumamoto. His expansive perspective on history was now grounded in Kumamoto but reached out beyond Japan to include East Asia. After the failure of his theory of heroic epochs, in Kumamoto he developed the \u201cEast Asian Worlds Theory\u201d as a new theory of ethnicity. T\u014dma\u2019s \u201cEast Asian Worlds Theory\u201d offered a continuation of Ishimoda\u2019s work, as the latter had been forced to abandon his research due to illness.<\/p>\r\n

The T\u014dma archive is currently managed by Arai Tomoko of the T\u014dma family and Yamashita Toshifumi, a disciple of T\u014dma. It is housed at the T\u014dma Seita \u201cKib\u014d no Rekishigaku\u201d Museum in K\u014dshi City, Kumamoto. This museum is T\u014dma\u2019s old house renovated, and offers the rare example of the archives of a famous historian being preserved in their entirety.<\/p>\r\n

Digitization of the T\u014dma collection will help to clarify two things: how T\u014dma\u2019s Marxist historiography was shaped by the political and social conditions of wartime and postwar Japan, and how he perceived East Asia during the Cold War. By digitizing and analyzing the letters T\u014dma sent to leading postwar historians, we can also show how the likes of Ishimoda Sh\u014d, Amino Yoshihiko, and Yasumaru Yoshio developed their historical research through exchanges with T\u014dma Seita. We look forward to the results of the project.<\/p>\r\n

\"\"

T\u014dma Seita \u201cKib\u014d no Rekishigaku\u201d Museum (Photo by the author).<\/p><\/div>","protected":false},"featured_media":2165,"template":"","class_list":["post-2172","research","type-research","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsletter.nichibun.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research\/2172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsletter.nichibun.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsletter.nichibun.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/research"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsletter.nichibun.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsletter.nichibun.ac.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}