Background
Jeffrey Paul Mass was born on June 29, 1940, in New York City, New York, United States.
198 College Hill Rd, Clinton, NY 13323, United States
Mass studied at Hamilton College.
New Haven, Connecticut 06520, United States
Mass entered the doctoral program at Yale University to work with Professor Hall.
70 Washington Square South, New York, NY, 10012, United States
Mass receive a Master of Arts in East Asian History from New York University in 1965.
(This volume analyzes the recurring form of warrior govern...)
This volume analyzes the recurring form of warrior government known as the Bakufu (or shogunate) that ruled Japan for nearly 700 years. All the essays in this collection clarify aspects of Japanese political tradition that have been neglected by Western writers, and point out alternatives to already stated views.
https://www.amazon.com/Bakufu-Japanese-History-Jeffrey-Mass/dp/0804722102/?tag=2022091-20
1985
(The Kamakura period, 1180-1333, is known as the era of Ja...)
The Kamakura period, 1180-1333, is known as the era of Japan's first warrior government. As the essays in this book show, however, the period was notable for the coexistence of two centers of authority, the Bakufu military government at Kamakura and the civilian court in Kyoto, with the newer warrior government gradually gaining ascendancy.
https://www.amazon.com/Court-Bakufu-Japan-Kamakura-History/dp/0804724733/?tag=2022091-20
1995
(This pioneering collection of fifteen essays proposes to ...)
This pioneering collection of fifteen essays proposes to change the way we think about fourteenth-century Japan and what preceded and followed it. Most notable is the search for Japan’s medieval beginnings, which are found not in the developments flowing from the establishment of the first shogunate in the 1180’s, but rather in the shogunate’s collapse 150 years later. In this admittedly controversial interpretation, the Kamakura age becomes the final episode in Japan’s late classical period, with the courtier and warrior regimes of that era together seeking to maintain the traditional order.
https://www.amazon.com/Origins-Japans-Medieval-World-Fourteenth/dp/0804728941/?tag=2022091-20
1997
(This book is a much expanded and wholly rewritten treatme...)
This book is a much expanded and wholly rewritten treatment of the subject of the author's first book, Warrior Government in Early Medieval Japan, published in 1974. In this new version, the "warrior" and "medieval" character of Japan's first shogunate is significantly de-emphasized, thus requiring not only a new title, but also a new book. The author's new view of the final decades of twelfth-century Japan is one of a less revolutionary set of experiences and a smaller achievement overall than previously thought.
https://www.amazon.com/Yoritomo-Founding-First-Bakufu-Government/dp/0804735913/?tag=2022091-20
2000
Jeffrey Paul Mass was born on June 29, 1940, in New York City, New York, United States.
Professor Mass developed his interest in Japan, and more broadly East Asia, as an undergraduate at Hamilton College, from which he graduated in 1962. He went on to receive a Master of Arts in East Asian History from New York University in 1965, and then entered the doctoral program at Yale University to work with Professor Hall.
After receiving his doctorate in 1971, Mass served as a Lecturer at Yale for a year before accepting a position as Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Stanford University in 1973, where he was to spend his entire career.
As a Stanford faculty member, Mass produced 10 books on medieval Japan, six written outright and four edited. He wrote five volumes on the Kamakura period, a goal he set for himself early in his career, and which he was pleased to have met. Professor Mass's work fundamentally reshaped the study of postmodern Japanese history outside Japan. He established the study of original sources administrative documents, wills, land transfers, diaries, and as the fundamental approach and demonstrated that non-Japanese could in fact master the challenging forms in which these sources were written.
The focus on original sources made possible new interpretations, as scholars moved away from more literary sources and secondary works in Japanese to confront the documents themselves. As a result Mass and his students, and others influenced by his work, moved beyond an older approach that saw Japan's medieval era as fundamentally analogous to that of the West, demonstrating instead that Japanese history had a rhythm of its own.
Professor Mass urged his students to move beyond his own work and into different periods. His scholarly approach also demanded that all interpretations be questioned, even his own. Nothing better illustrates this attitude than the fact that his last book on the Kamakura Period was a rewriting of his first. His very first work, Warrior Government in Early Medieval Japan: A Study of the Kamakura Bakufu, Shugo, and Jito (Yale, 1974) already established Mass as the premier young scholar in the field.
Professor Mass presided over several major academic conferences at Stanford and Oxford resulting in important edited volumes that have helped to shape approaches to the study of medieval Japan. The most recent of these was The Origins of Japan's Medieval World: Courtiers, Warriors, Clerics, and Peasants in the Fourteenth Century (Stanford, 1997).
While Professor Mass spent his entire American academic career at Stanford, his impact was much broader. From 1987 he was a Visiting Professor at Hertford College, Oxford University, travelling to England every year to teach in the late spring and summer. Professor Mass was extremely proud of his two appointments at Stanford and Oxford and maintained a fierce loyalty to both institutions.
Professor Mass had been Executive Director of the IUC since 1995, and he worked tirelessly to place this important academic training resource on a sound financial basis.
While teaching at Oxford, Professor Mass developed a keen interest in English coins, which turned into a passion. He attacked it with same intensity that he did Japanese scholarship, becoming a noted authority on coins of the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a period that corresponded roughly to his beloved Kamakura Period. He was very pleased that, shortly before his death, he had completed his manuscript The J.P. Mass Collection of English Short Cross Coins, 1180-1247, volume 56 in Syllogy of Coins of the British Isles, which will be forthcoming soon from Oxford University Press and the British Academy.
(This book is a much expanded and wholly rewritten treatme...)
2000(This pioneering collection of fifteen essays proposes to ...)
1997(This volume analyzes the recurring form of warrior govern...)
1985(The Kamakura period, 1180-1333, is known as the era of Ja...)
1995A specialist in the legal and institutional history of the Kamakura Period (1185-1333), Professor Mass was regarded as the Western historian of postmodern Japan with the most profound knowledge of the primary sources of the period. Indeed, his passion for documents was legendary. His own collection is the most extensive private library of primary sources outside of Japan. It was a passion that he passed on to a large cohort of graduate students.
Jeffrey Mass was married to Rosa, and had two daughters, Karen and Tara.