Andrew Gordon

Andrew Gordon, the Lee and Juliet Folger Fund Professor of History at Harvard University, has established himself as a leading authority on modern Japanese history since receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1981. After teaching at Duke University, he joined Harvard's faculty in 1995, where he has made significant contributions through his research on labor relations, consumer culture, and modern Japan's social history. His academic career is marked by influential publications, including "Fabricating Consumers: The Sewing Machine in Modern Japan" (2011), which explores Japan's consumer modernization, and "Labor and Imperial Democracy in Prewar Japan" (1991), which earned the prestigious John King Fairbank Prize. His widely-used textbook "A Modern History of Japan" has been translated into multiple languages and is currently in its third edition. Gordon has held several leadership positions at Harvard, including Chair of the History Department (2004-07) and Director of the Reischauer Institute for Japanese Studies (1998-2004, 2010-2011). His teaching portfolio includes courses on modern and premodern Japanese history, comparative labor history, and specialized seminars such as "Japan in Asia and the World" and "Research Seminar in Japanese History." In recognition of his scholarly contributions, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2014 and received the Imperial Decoration, Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon. Beyond his academic work, he has demonstrated his versatility by publishing works that bridge academic and popular interests, including a Japanese-language book about baseball player Daisuke Matsuzaka's first season with the Boston Red Sox.