Ronald Toby

Ronald P. Toby (1942-2025) was an American historian, academic, writer and Japanologist.

Early life

Toby earned a doctorate in Japanese history from Columbia University in 1977.

Career

As a university professor, Toby's teaching experience has included the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of California at Berkeley, Keio University, and the University of Tokyo.

Toby's academic specialization focuses on issues having to do with pre- and early-modern Japan. His book State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan demonstrates that during the so-called "closed country" period in the Edo era, Japan was never truly closed to the outside world.

Select works

Tony's published writings encompass 52 works in 158 publications in 3 languages and 2,117 library holdings.

• 2019 — Engaging the Other: 'Japan' and Its Alter-Egos, 1550-1850 Leiden:Brill. ; OCLC 1066182857
• 2004 — Emergence of Economic Society in Japan, 1600-1870 with Hayami Akira and Osamu Saitō. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ; OCLC 53388426
• 1983 — State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan: Asia in the Development of the Tokugawa Bakufu. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ; OCLC 182640041
• 1977 — The Early Tokugawa Bakufu and Seventeenth Century Japanese Relations with East Asia. Ph.D. thesis, Columbia University. OCLC 6909487
• 1974 — Korean-Japanese Diplomacy in 1711: Sukchong's Court and the Shogun's Title. M.A. thesis, Columbia University. OCLC 45788706

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