James McMullen

Position:

Retired University Lecturer, Japanese 

Faculty / College Address:

Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

Email:

james.mcmullen@ames.ox.ac.uk 

Research Interests:

  • Pre-Restoration history and culture, especially the history of Confucian thought and institutions in Japan

Current Projects:

  • The history of the Sekiten and Sekisai rituals to venerate Confucius in Japan
  • Article on the thought of Ogyuu Sorai

Courses Taught:

  • Introduction to premodern Japanese history and culture
  • Classical and modern literary and historical texts
  • Unseen translation

Recent Publications:

  • Genji Gaiden: the origins of Kumazawa Banzan's commentary on the Tale of Genji, Reading: Ithaca Press 1991
  • Idealism, protest, and the Tale of Genji, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1999
  • "Kuge, buke, juhsa", in Yokoyama Toshio (ed.), Kaibara Ekiken: Tenchi Waraku no Bunmeigaku, TakyoL Heibonsha 1995 [In Japanese]
  • "The worship of Confucius in ancient Japan", in P. Kornicki and I.J. McMullen (eds.), Religion in Japan, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996
  • "Ashikaga Takauji and the fourtheenth-century dynastic schism", in J.P. Mass (ed.), The origins of Japan's medieval world, Stanford: Stanford University Press 1997
  • "La melancholie de l'amour: Motoori Norinaga et le Dit du Genji", Japon pluriel, 4 [2001], pp. 349-71
  • Confucian Perspectives on the Akô Revenge: Law and moral agency", Monumneta Nipponica, 58:3 [2003], pp. 293-315.

Photograph of James McMullen