About - ŌKAWA Kensaku

Ōkawa Kensaku 大川謙作 is a Professor of Chinese Language and Culture at the College of Humanities and Sciences, Nihon University, Tokyo. He studied Tibetology in Tokyo, Taipei, and Lhasa. He obtained his PhD in anthropology from the University of Tokyo. His current research interests are Tibetan social history, Tibetophone and Sinophone modern Tibetan literature, the development of Tibetan Buddhism in Taiwan, and Sino-Tibetan relations in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He has translated Tibetan novels from authors such as Dondrub Gyel (don grub rgyal ), Tsering Dondrub (tshe ring don grub), and Pema Tseten (padma tshe brtan) into Japanese. His recent publications on Tibetan social history include “Latent Modernization in Traditional Tibet: An Essay on the Evolution of Land Lease Systems in Tibetan Rural Society,” Revue d’Études Tibétaines 57 (2021); and “Mi bogs Revisited: On the Nature of the Institution of ‘Human Lease’ in Traditional Tibetan Society” [in Japanese], Journal of Asia and African Studies 105 (2023). He is currently working on the history of the social system in rural Tibet in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.