Ronald P. Loftus

Ron Loftus grew up in various parts of Asia and Europe, most notably, India, France, Italy, and Thailand. As a graduate student, he studied Japanese language and history and later taught Japanese language, literature, history and film for over forty years at a small liberal arts college in the USA. His research interests include late Meiji social and intellectual history, and women’s autobiographies or "self-writing," publishing two books on this latter subject: Telling Lives (University of Hawai’i press, 2004) dealing with prewar years, and Changing Lives (Association of Asian Studies, 2013) on postwar Japan. In 2017, he completed a biography of the fascinating Meiji social and cultural critic, Taoka Reiun (1870-1912), The Turn Against the Modern (Association for Asian Studies). Since retiring from a full-time teaching career he has been experimenting with writing historical fiction.