Katsuro Hara

Japanese: 原勝郎 - はら・かつろう

Year of death: January 14, 1924
Year of birth: 26th February 1871 (15th April 1871)
A historian of the Meiji and Taisho periods. The eldest son of Hara Katsuta, a samurai of the Nanbu clan (Iwate Prefecture). Born in Osawa, Morioka City, Iwate Prefecture. After graduating from Morioka Middle School and First Higher School, he entered the Department of History at the Faculty of Letters of the Imperial University of Tokyo. He studied under Riess and Shigeno Yasutsugu. He graduated in 1896 and went on to graduate school. His classmates included such distinguished historians as Kuroita Katsumi, Uchida Ginzo, and Kita Sadakichi, and both Uchida and he later became instructors at Kyoto University. That same year, he was drafted into the 4th Infantry Regiment of the Imperial Guard, and in 1909, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant and discharged. That same year, he became a professor at First Higher School, and three years later, he was awarded a doctorate in literature for his works "The Development of Culture in the Kamakura Period" and "A Distribution Table of the New Temples of Various Sects in the Kamakura Period." However, two years later, he was sent to war again due to the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, and was finally discharged in 1905, when he returned to his research life. In February of the following year, 1904, he revised the aforementioned dissertation and published it under the title "Japanese Medieval History." It was Hara's achievement to first term the Kamakura and Muromachi periods, which had previously been called the samurai and feudal eras, as "medieval times," and to popularize the term. He then turned to research in modern Western history, and in November 1904, he studied abroad in Europe and the United States. Immediately after returning to Japan, in March 1907, he was invited by Kano Kokichi to become a professor at the Faculty of Letters of Kyoto Imperial University, which had just been founded, together with Naito Konan and others, and in 1922 he became dean of the Faculty of Letters. His representative work, "The Life of an Honorable Man in the Higashiyama Period," was serialized in the Kyoto University Faculty of Letters journal, Geibun, from 1917, and vividly portrayed the social conditions following the Onin War, focusing on the lifestyle and culture of Sanjonishi Sanetaka. He died of cancer in Kobe. He was awarded the Order of the Third Rank, 2nd Class.

(Akira Imaya)

Source: Asahi Japanese Historical Biography: Asahi Shimbun Publications Inc. About Asahi Japanese Historical Biography

Japanese:

没年：大正13.1.14(1924)
生年：明治4.2.26(1871.4.15)
明治大正期の歴史家。南部藩(岩手県)藩士原勝多の長男。岩手県盛岡市大沢に出生。盛岡中学,一高を卒業し,東京帝国大学文科大学史学科に入学。リースや重野安繹に師事した。明治29(1896)年卒業し大学院に進学。黒板勝美,内田銀蔵,喜田貞吉ら錚々たる歴史家が同期生に名を連ね,なかんずく内田とはのち共に京大の教官となった。この年召集を受けて近衛歩兵第4連隊に入り,同32年少尉に任官して除隊となる。この年一高の教授に就任し,3年後「鎌倉時代における文化の発達」「鎌倉時代新興諸宗寺院分布表」によって文学博士の学位を授与される。しかし2年後,日露の開戦によって再び出征し,明治38年ようやく除隊となって研究生活に復帰した。翌39年2月,前述の学位論文を修正して『日本中世史』と題して出版した。武家時代,封建時代と称されていた鎌倉・室町期を初めて「中世」と名付け,普及させたのは原の功績である。以後西洋近代史研究に転じ,39年11月より欧米に留学,帰国直後の42年3月より狩野亨吉に招かれ,内藤湖南らと共に創立直後の京都帝大文科大学の教授に就任,大正11(1922)年には文学部長となった。代表作の『東山時代に於ける一縉紳の生活』は大正6年より京大文学部機関紙『芸文』に連載されたもので,三条西実隆の生活文化を中心に応仁の乱後の世相を活写した。癌のため神戸で死去。従三位勲2等に叙せられた。

(今谷明)

出典　朝日日本歴史人物事典：（株）朝日新聞出版朝日日本歴史人物事典について　情報

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