History of the Department

The Chair of Japanese History at the Ruhr University was established in 1965 and is still the only professorship in the German-speaking world to focus so explicitly on Japanese history. The first holder of the chair was Horst Hammitzsch, who taught in Bochum from 1965 to 1977. His research focused on the early modern period (Tokugawa period) and in particular the intellectual history of Japan. A major project that went far beyond the narrow scope of Japanese history was the compilation and publication of the Japan Handbook, which appeared in 1981.

His successor in 1978 was Hans A. Dettmer, who, in addition to his research on the legal history of the Nara period and the Ainu, laid the foundations for the systematic cataloguing and processing of the collections of the Siebold archive and, in connection with this, worked as editor of the Acta Sieboldiana series until his retirement.

With the appointment of Regine Mathias to the chair in September 1996, the establishment of a new specialisation »Modern and Contemporary History of Japan« began, in which the social, economic and cultural-historical developments of Japan from the 17th century to the present are the main focus of research and teaching.