Pia Jolliffe

I am a historian of Japan with a particular interest in historical anthropology, girls’ and boys’ experiences of the transition from sixteenth to seventeenth century Japan, Buddhist temples as places of memory, and the history Christianity in Japan. In 2022 I was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and enjoy teaching Japanese history to a variety of people, including  university students, school children and adult learners.

At the moment I am working on a monograph with the provisional title Himegimi. Girls, Buddhism and the memory of political defeat in early modern Japan (1595-1630). Focusing on the case study of the women and children of Toyotomi Hidetsugu’s household, my multi-sited historical anthropological study reveals girls’ and young women’s roles during Japan’s long civil war.  I argue that viewing the transition from sixteenth to seventeenth century Japan through the girls, boys and women of the Hidetsugu household, draws our attention to individuals and Buddhist communities who lost their lives and livelihoods during Japan’s “re-unification” process and thus to alternative histories of the period.

I recently published with Katja Triplett and Yoshimi Orii our co-edited volume Japan in the Early Modern World. Religion, Translation, and Transnational Relations. I also continue working on referenced entries for each of the twenty-six martyrs of Nagasaki (1597) for the Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (Traugott Bautz Verlag).

I am in the early stages of a new project on the child Empress Meishō (1624-1696) and her siblings who grew up in Buddhist imperial convents in seventeenth century Japan and shall give an invited paper on this topic at a conference on “Dynastic Reproduction in Early Modern Eurasia” to be held 10-12 June 2026 at the University of Basel.

A list of my publications can be found at my webpage at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford: https://www.bfriars.ox.ac.uk/people/dr-pia-maria-jolliffe/