Prof Beatrice Bodart-Bailey

Beatrice M. Bodart-Bailey completed her undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the ANU. From 1982-86 she was a visiting professor at Ottawa University, establishing the teaching of Japanese history.

Returning to Canberra she was a research fellow in the Research School of Pacific Studies, translating the manuscript of the German physician Engelbert Kaempfer who visited Japan 1690-1692, with a year on a Japan Foundation Fellowship at Tokyo University and a year at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Kyoto.

In 1990, on the 300th anniversary of the arrival of Engelbert Kaempfer in Japan, she had the honour of being invited to a personal audience with his Imperial Majesty the Emperor of Japan (now Emperor Emeritus) to inform him about her research on Kaempfer.

In 1994, she published Kenperu to Tokugawa Tsunayoshi in the popular paper back series Chuukou Shinsho. She also contributed to and edited with Derek Massarella The Furthest Goal: Engelbert Kaempfer's Encounter with Tokugawa Japan  (Japan Library 1996) which appeared in Japanese translation as Harukanaru Mokutekichi, Osaka University Press, 1999.

Her annotated translation of Kaempfer's manuscript was published as Kaempfer's Japan: Tokugawa Culture Observed, University of Hawai'i Press, 1999.

1997-1999 she was appointed professor in the Department of Economics of Kobe University, while at the same time a member of the preparatory committee for the establishment of the Facutly of Comparative Culture of Otsuma Women's University. From the establishment of the Faculty in 1999 untill her retirement in 2015, she weekly taught six 90-minute lectures and seminars in Japanese, including lectures on various aspects of Japanese History, Comparative Culture and German.

In 2006 she published a detailed re-appraisal of the black sheep of the Tokugawa line, the socalled Dog Shogun, as The Dog Shogun: The Personality and Policies of Tokugawa Tsunayoshi (University of Hawai'i Press.) In February 2015 this appeared in Japanese translation as Inu shougun: Tsunayoshi wa meikun ka, boukun ka? (Kashiwa shobou).

Another Japanese publication on Engelbert Kaempfer, Kenperu: reisetsu no kuni ni kitarite, was written at the request of the publisher Minerva, Kyoto, for a series on important personalities in Japanese history, and has appeared in Japanese only.

She has published 8 books in English and Japanese and 34 chapters in books and articles in academic journals. She has also authored articles on a variety of topics in popular publications and the internet.

She is at present completing an English biography of Engelbert Kaempfer.

Pre-modern Japanese history, comparative history and culture.

MA, Phd ANU, professor emeritus, Otsuma Women's University, Tokyo