The North Carolina Lecture

Reflections on The Last Samurai

October 6, 2009 | Wright Auditorium | 7:00PM

Dr Mark Ravina is an internationally recognized authority on early-modern samurai history and culture. Dr. Ravina is a professor of history and chair of the Department of Russian and East Asian Studies at Emory University. Dr. Ravina’s specialization is Japanese history, especially eighteenth- and nineteenth-century politics. Ravina’s first book, Land and Lordship in Early Modern Japan (Stanford, 1999), was recently published in a Japanese translation as Meikun no satetsu (2004).

Dr. Ravina is best known for his biography of Saigo Takamori (1827-1877) entitled The Last Samurai (John Wiley & Sons, 2004). Saigo was the inspiration for the character Katsumoto in the Tom Cruise film, also entitled The Last Samurai. That the film, which opened shortly after Ravina’s book was published, was, as Dr. Ravina explains, “pure coincidence.” Nevertheless, the Warner Brothers film piqued interest in Ravina’s biography of Saigo, resulting in his appearance as a "guest expert" on CNN and on two History Channel programs: "History vs. Hollywood" and "The Samurai."  

On a more scholarly note, Dr. Ravina has begun to explore the idea of transnational history, emphasizing interactions between nations and cultures, reflecting his broader methodological interests in the transnational/international dimensions of state-building.