Professor William Howard Coaldrake
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Foundation Professor of Japanese Room 306 Tel: + 61 3 8344 5990 |
Background
William H. Coaldrake is Foundation Professor of Japanese at the University of Melbourne and Head of Japanese Studies. He was born in Japan of Australian missionary parents in the last year of the Allied Occupation. After graduating in Asian Studies from the Australian National University, he received Fulbright and Knox Fellowships for postgraduate studies in the United States. In 1983 he obtained his doctorate from Harvard University in the history of Japanese architecture.
Professor Coaldrake was Lecturer on Fine Arts at Harvard University (1983-86) and Senior Research Fellow at the Australian National University (1988-92), before moving to the University of Melbourne in 1992 as the first Professor of Japanese and Japanese Studies.
Professor Coaldrake is the only non-Japanese member of the prestigious Kyoto Guild of Traditional Master Builders (Kyoto dentô kenchiku gijutsu kyôkai). He has written two books on Japanese architecture: The Way of the Carpenter: Tools and Japanese Architecture (Weatherhill, 1990), based on his experiences as a member of the Kyoto Guild of Traditional Master Builders; Architecture and Authority in Japan (Routledge, 1996. Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies, Oxford), based on a series of lectures given at Oxford in 1989 and 1991. He was responsible for the republication in 2001 of Hirokichi Mutsu’s landmark compilation The British Press and the Japan-British Exhibition of 1910, London (Routledge Curzon Press), adding an introduction, bibliography and illustrations. He has recently compiled, edited and written an introduction and commentaries for Japan from War to Peace: The Coaldrake Records 1939-1956 (Routledge Curzon, May 2003), the archives of his father who was the first Australian civilian and missionary to enter Japan after World War 2, and his mother who went to Japan first in 1950. In 2005-2006 he has been invited by Harvard University to be Edwin O. Reischauer Visiting Professor of Japanese Studies, teaching courses on the history of Japanese architecture and society.
Research Interests
- Japanese architectural and urban history
- Japanese art history
- Japanese art and architectural conservation
- Japanese history from Tokugawa to present
- Contemporary Australia-Japan political and cultural relations
Professor Coaldrake is writing a major book "Japanese Art," commissioned by Phaidon Press, London, for their 'Art and Ideas' Series. He is breaking new conceptual ground by linking art with architectural setting, and space with time by exploring specific places and their art. The book will be published in 2006. He is also preparing a research seminar to be held at Harvard University in 2006 on the theme of Japanese architectonics.