Ishimoda Shō

Who was Ishimoda Shō?

Ishimoda Shō in Sapporo the capital of Hokkaidō was a Japanese historian, specializing in ancient Japanese history, with a particular interest in the nature of the structural transition from the ancient to the medieval period. As an orthodox materialist, he was a lifetime member of the Communist Party, and influential Marxist scholar in the analyses on Japanese history conducted by members of the post-war Rekiken group. In the 1950s, after the success of the communist revolution in China in 1949, he espoused that model as the Asian alternative to Westernization, which had failed in Japan.