Akira Fujiwara

Akira Fujiwara (藤原 彰^?, Fujiwara Akira, 2 July 1922 – 26 February 2003) was a Japanese historian. His academic speciality was modern Japanese history and he was a professor emeritus at Hitotsubashi University. In 1980 he became a member of the Science Council of Japan and was a former chairman of the Historical Science Society of Japan.

He was born in Tokyo and after graduating from Rokuchu Tokyo Prefectural School, now Shinjuku Tokyo Metropolitan High School, in March 1940, he was part of the 55th graduating class at the Imperial Japanese Army Academy in July 1941 and the following December was deployed to North China as a trainee officer with the rank of Second Lieutenant attached to the 27th Division’s 3rd China Garrison Infantry Regiment. In March 1943 he was promoted to First Lieutenant and in April was put in charge of a company. In 1944 his division moved to a new front and participated in Operation Ichi-Go, after which he was promoted to captain. In March 1945 in the final stages of World War II he was ordered to transfer to mainland Japan and in June was appointed as commander of a battalion within the 524th Infantry Regiment of the 216th Division in preparation for the expected invasion of Japan. He survived the war and in November was sent into the reserves.

In May 1946 Fujiwara enrolled in history courses at the department of humanities at Tokyo Imperial University, now the University of Tokyo and graduated in March 1949. From 1954 to 1968 he worked as a part-time lecturer in the department of humanities and sciences at Chiba University. Then in 1967 he started a new job at Hitotsubashi University and in November accepted the position of associate professor in the department of sociology. In December 1969 he became a full professor and, in 1970, the head of his department. He left Hitotsubashi University in 1986 due to compulsory retirement but the same year got a part-time job as a lecturer in Rikkyo University’s department of humanities. Between 1989 and 1993 he was a professor at Kagawa Education Institute of Nutrition.

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