Umehara Takeshi

Takeshi Umehara (梅原 猛, Umehara Takeshi^?, born March 20, 1925) was born in Miyagi Prefecture in Tōhoku and graduated from the philosophical faculty of Kyoto University in 1948. He taught philosophy at Ritsumeikan University and was subsequently appointed president of the Kyoto City University of Arts. He is noted for his prolific essays on Japanese culture, in which he has endeavoured to refound the discipline of Japanese studies along more Japanocentric lines, notably in his book Nihongaku kotohajime (日本学事始) written in 1972 in collaboration with Shunpei Ueyama. Aside from his voluminous academic essays on numerous aspects of Japanese culture he has also composed theatrical works on figures as varied as Yamato Takeru and Gilgamesh.

He was appointed in 1987 to head the International Research Center for Japanese Studies, otherwise known by the abbreviation of Nichibunken, established by Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone to function as a centralized academic body collecting and classifying all available information about Japanese culture, both within Japan and abroad. He retired as head administrator of Nichibunken in 1995.

His mother Chiyo Ishikawa died early while Umehara was being breast-fed, and his father was still a student at Tohoku University. Arrangements were made to have him looked after by relatives, and over New Year 1927, aged 1 year nine months, Umehara was adopted by his father’s brother Hanbei Umehara and his wife Toshi, and raised as their foster child.