Dr Pia Jolliffe

I am a historian of Japan with a particular interest in transnational relations and religions as well as the history of childhood and youth in premodern Japan. In the past I also researched prisons and forced labour in nineteenth century Ezo/Hokkaido. I teach premodern Japanese history to  university students at the University of Oxford as well as to visiting students from the US and China. I moreover have experience teaching adult learners in Continuing Education and enjoy visiting schools to teach pupils of different ages about Japanese history. In 2022, I was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. I am also an Associate Fellow at the Higher Education Academy.

My academic research revolves around two main themes:

1. Transnational relations and religions in premodern Japan

I recently published with Katja Triplett and Yoshimi Orii our co-edited volume Japan in the Early Modern World. Religion, Translation, and Transnational Relations. Through the lenses of religion and translation, contributors explored how non-state actors such as missionaries, merchants, scholars and artists created transnational relations in the context of the colonial and missionary enterprises involving Japan, between 1550 and 1800. Paying attention not only to Japan and Europe, but also to countries and areas such as China, Southeast Asia, South America and the Middle East, our volume makes a significant contribution in showing connections between all these geographical areas in the early modern world.

           Early modern transnational relations between Japan, Russia and the indigenous peoples around the Sea of Okhotsk are the subject of my current project on the nineteenth century Japanese merchant Takadaya Kahei (1769-1824) who became a captive of the Russian navy in the wake of the Golovnin incident (1812). I am invited to give an initial paper on this research at the international workshop “Japan in Early Modern Encounters: Translation, Mission and Subordination“ to be held 25-27 June 2026 at Leipzig University.

2. History of childhood and youth in premodern Japan

At the moment I am working towards completion of a monograph with the provisional title Himegimi. Girls, Buddhist communities and political defeat in Japan (1595-1630). Focusing on the case study of the women and children of Toyotomi Hidetsugu’s household, my multi-sited historical anthropological study reveals girls’ and young women’s roles during Japan’s long civil war.  I argue that viewing the transition from sixteenth to seventeenth century Japan through the girls, boys and women of the Hidetsugu household, draws our attention to individuals and Buddhist communities who lost their lives and livelihoods during Japan’s “re-unification” process and thus to alternative histories of the period. 

I am in the early stages of a new project on the child Empress Meishō (1624-1696) and her siblings who grew up in Buddhist imperial convents in seventeenth century Japan and shall give an invited paper on this topic at a conference on “Dynastic Reproduction in Early Modern Eurasia” to be held 10-12 June 2026 at the University of Basel.

A list of my publications can be found at my webpage at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford: https://www.bfriars.ox.ac.uk/people/dr-pia-maria-jolliffe/