ISHIKAWA, Hiroki

Professor, Dr.

Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa,
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
3-11-1 Asahi-cho, Fuchu-shi,
Tokyo, 183-8534, Japan

Email: ishikawa[at]aa.tufs.ac.jp

Personal Homepage: http://www.aa.tufs.ac.jp/~ishikawa/

Research interests: History of Sub-Saharan Africa

I have studied the history of Sub-Saharan Africa, especially the history of the Ethiopian highlands.

I have studied the history of Solomonic Ethiopia which was founded in the Ethiopian highlands in the 13th century. The name of the kingdom is derived from the legends that the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon of the Kingdom of Israel had a son and that the monarchs of this kingdom were his descendants. Christianity arrived in the fourth century in the Ethiopian highlands, and then the Ethiopian Church was formed. Most of the people in the kingdom were the followers of this church. They left numerous documents in Ge‘ez letters. In addition to these documents, the Jesuits, who propagated Roman Catholicism in the kingdom in the 16th and 17th centuries, wrote several books and many letters. Using these documents as historical sources, I have studied unsettled questions on the history of the kingdom between the 16th and 18th centuries. I am continuing my study of Ethiopian history and have started to examine the history of other parts of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Recent Works

The Europeans made special images of the Christians in Ethiopia, who maintained independence in the “Scramble for Africa” and maintained a unique form of Christianity. I first concern myself with revealing the influences of these images on Ethiopia itself and on other parts of the world.
Agriculture has played an important role in most Sub-Saharan societies. My second objective is to promote the study of African history in Japan by examining agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa from a historical perspective along with other historians and anthropologists.

Research Projects:

ILCAA Joint Research Project “Rethinking History of Agriculture and Rural Society in Africa (2): From the Viewpoint of Indigenous Agricultural Revolution (jrp000251)”

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