Taro Matsuo, professor of economics at Hosei University and a former dean of the faculty, died on October 8th. He had booked an apartment in Dublin for what was to be his last sabbatical before retirement. Unexpectedly, almost on the eve of his visit, illness and finally death crept upon him.
In the massive post-war expansion of Japanese higher education, he was not the first nor the only historian to develop an interest in Ireland; but he was easily the most productive and his influence directly and indirectly upon the small, active and growing group of graduate students and scholars in Japan working on Irish history was enormous.
As undergraduate and graduate student, he acquired his interest in Europe and his philosophy of history (liberal, interested in but critical of the development of modern capitalism) from the great Prof Otsuka of Tokyo University, and he in turn taught European history. While he wrote a textbook of European history which is a remarkable synthesis, with a thoughtful and original presentation, Ireland became his real passion, partly because of his interest in traditional society and in how the intrusion of commercialisation undermined its stable and traditional values. His final paper appeared as recently as last July - a long, comparative article on the literature about the impact of modernisation on the rural societies of Ireland, England, Wales and Scotland.
Taro Matsuo was very much a product of the early post-war Japanese university system - pacifist, internationalist and idealist. He was a formidable and indefatigable researcher: the treasurehouse of the British Parliamentary Papers in Tokyo, together with his own industry during his relatively few but lengthy visits, made possible a stream of contributions on Ireland.
In the early 1970s he had begun detailed study of Irish rural communities, working through the valuation records and the Land Registry to document the structure of rural society and the changes in it. He began this work before others had adopted a similarly detailed approach and his studies, reaching from Carnmoney in Antrim to Dooega in Achill and on to Munster, repay reading. He wrote on other aspects of Irish history including Japanese associations with Ireland; Japanese government officials' study in the 1920s of Irish land reform; Ireland's role in the Manchurian crisis; Japanese industry in Ireland; and, long before the current Lafcadio Hearn craze began, he had explored in both Japanese and English Hearn's Irish background.
He understood Ireland very well, and had read more widely on Ireland than most if not all living Irish historians. Much of his work is in English; and, though the Japanese journals which contain it are not known in Ireland, there are off-prints of the papers in several Irish libraries.
Kindly, courteous and with a good sense of humour, he related very well to people, and did so as easily moving around Ireland as in his native Japan. His loss will be mourned not only by his wife and daughter, but by many in Japan and by a circle in Ireland which widened with each visit and which included friends well beyond the university circuit.
L.M.C.