Arthur Stockwin: 28 November 1935 to 7 January 2026
Arthur Stockwin passed away on Wednesday afternoon (7 January) at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital. He was taken there after suffering a severe stroke last weekend (while saying over in the Cotswolds) from which he was unable to recover. He had celebrated his 90th Birthday at the end of November.
Arthur was born and went to school in Birmingham. In his final year, he won a scholarship to study Classics at Exeter College, Oxford but had to postpone his entry for two years in order to undertake national service, which included an eighteen-month intensive Russian course at the Joint Services School of Languages. When he eventually took up his place at Exeter it was to do the PPE course from which he graduated in 1959 before moving to the Australian National University in Canberra to embark on a PhD in International Relations .
Arthur originally intended to write his doctoral thesis on Soviet foreign policy in Asia but, when the project failed to gel and unable to find an appropriate supervisor, he became more interested in the Asian side of the equation, and most particularly in Japan, a country which he devoted the rest of his life to studying. His subsequent thesis, supervised by David Sissons (from whom he said he learnt the meticulous concern with punctuation, grammar and footnoting which characterised his own style of supervising students later in his career), was titled "The Neutralist Policy of the Japanese Socialist Party". It was published as The Japanese Socialist Party and Neutralism by Melbourne University Press in 1968 with a Japanese translation (by Haruhiro Fukui) coming out the following year. The story of these early years of Arthur’s life is beautifully told in his book, Towards Japan: A Personal Journey (Renaissance Books), which was originally published in 2020 based on diaries and papers that he had kept from those days and is now available on Kindle.
From 1964, Arthur taught in the Political Science department at the Australian National University but – significantly in terms of what happened a few years later - he returned to Oxford for six months in 1973 to take up a Senior Associate Membership at St Antony’s College sponsored by Dick Storry, who was Director of what was known as the Far East Centre. It was during this time that Arthur began work on what became his best-known book, Japan: Divided Politics in a Growth Economy (which went on to have four editions in total).
When the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies was established in 1979 and advertised for its first Professor and Director (with an attached Fellowship at St Antony’s), Arthur was perfectly placed to apply. He was interviewed in early December 1980, took up the position from early 1982, and remained in the role until he retired in 2003 and was elected an Emeritus Fellow. During his two decades as Professor and Director, Arthur built the Institute into the institution that it has become today. He embedded teaching about Japan into numerous undergraduate as well as graduate programmes; developed one of the largest doctoral programmes in Japanese studies in the world; established the weekly Nissan Institute seminar series; and founded the Nissan Institute/Routledge Japanese Studies publication series which during his time as General Editor published well over one hundred volumes on all aspects of contemporary Japan. His success persuaded the Nissan Motor Company to make a second benefaction on the 10th anniversary of the Institute which allowed it to move from its original home in 1 Church Walk to a new home inside the College’s curtilage. This was opened in 1993 following a groundbreaking ceremony performed by the then Crown Prince (the current Emperor) of Japan.
Most of Arthur’s publications during his academic career was in the form of a large number of elegantly argued journal articles, the best of which were helpfully pulled together in a two-volume collection published by Japan Library in 2012. Many of his key ideas about Japanese politics and society were also presented in his invaluable Dictionary of the Modern Politics of Japan, published in 2003. In retirement, though, Arthur felt that for the first time in years he could concentrate full-time on research and produced a series of books on a broad variety of topics including the fourth edition of Governing Japan (2008), Rethinking Japan: The Politics of Contested Nationalism (with Kweku Ampiah 2017), and, just two years ago, The Failure of Political Opposition in Japan: Implications for Democracy and a Vision of the Future (2023) as well as generously translating several books on Japan from both Japanese and French for the Nissan/Routledge series. In 2006, a festschrift was published in his honour, The Left in the Shaping of Japanese Democracy: Essays in Honour of J.A.A. Stockwin, which was edited by two of his former doctoral students, David Williams and Rikki Kersten.
Within St Antony’s, Arthur served on numerous committees but was particularly engaged with college affairs during the early period of the Wardenship of Marrack Goulding. During this time, he served as Sub-Warden and chaired the committee responsible for overseeing the construction of the Founders’ Building which was opened by Princess Anne in 2001.
Arthur’s contributions to Japanese studies were recognised in multiple ways. He was President of the British Association of Japanese Studies in 1994-5. In 2004, he was presented with The Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon on behalf of the Emperor of Japan for his efforts to promote Japanese Studies in the United Kingdom. He was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 2009 for ‘services to academic excellence and the promotion of UK-Japanese understanding’. In 2019, he received an Honorary Doctorate from the Australian National University. In 2023, a generous benefaction funded by one of Arthur’s former doctoral students allowed St Antony’s to establish the Arthur Stockwin Scholar’s Fund to support students doing fieldwork and research in Japan.
If the above gives some indication of Arthur’s academic and administrative achievements, it does not capture the warmth of his personality and in particular his extraordinary generosity of spirit. This was best represented perhaps by the huge number of doctoral students he supervised throughout his career, many of whom have gone on to distinguished careers of their own. It is hard to imagine a more supportive or open-minded supervisor: Arthur never insisted that his students take a particular position but allowed them free rein on condition only that they could express their arguments clearly and back them up with high-quality empirical data. This same approach extended to all his interactions: he could always see the ‘best’ in others and was unfailingly polite and respectful of other peoples’ views.
Arthur always enjoyed being in company and was a natural performer: every year he would write a humorous poem to be recited at the Nissan Institute Christmas Party while wearing a Father Christmas hat; he memorably performed a Noh play in the Institute lecture theatre; his sense of fun and humour was on full display when, surrounded by his family, he celebrated his 90th birthday party just six weeks ago. He will be much missed but his legacy at both St Antony’s and the Nissan Institute will live on for a very long time.
Roger Goodman, Warden, St Antony’s College and Nissan Professor of Modern Japanese Studies.
