was a Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese historian

Historian

A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...

 who was an associate professor at the University of Tokyo

University of Tokyo

, abbreviated as , is a major research university located in Tokyo, Japan. The University has 10 faculties with a total of around 30,000 students, 2,100 of whom are foreign. Its five campuses are in Hongō, Komaba, Kashiwa, Shirokane and Nakano. It is considered to be the most prestigious university...

 Faculty of Law and specialised in the history of Western political thought, particularly the republican

Republicanism

Republicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, where the head of state is appointed by means other than heredity, often elections. The exact meaning of republicanism varies depending on the cultural and historical context...

 the ideas of James Harrington

James Harrington

James Harrington was an English political theorist of classical republicanism, best known for his controversial work, The Commonwealth of Oceana .-Early life:...

, Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury , in some older texts Thomas Hobbs of Malmsbury, was an English philosopher, best known today for his work on political philosophy...

, David Hume

David Hume

David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...

, and Niccolò Machiavelli

Niccolò Machiavelli

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli was an Italian historian, philosopher, humanist, and writer based in Florence during the Renaissance. He is one of the main founders of modern political science. He was a diplomat, political philosopher, playwright, and a civil servant of the Florentine Republic...

.

Life and work

Fukuda received an M.Litt. degree in modern history from the University of Oxford

University of Oxford

The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

 in 1992, His master's thesis

Thesis

A dissertation or thesis is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings...

, "James Harrington and the idea of mixed government, 1642–1683", was selected for publication in the series Oxford Historical Monographs. It appeared in an expanded book form as Sovereignty and the Sword: Harrington, Hobbes, and Mixed Government in the English Civil Wars in 1997.

Following his return to Japan, Fukuda retained close ties to academia in the UK. His Oxford college, St Edmund Hall, extended him rights of the Senior Common Room, a privilege usually reserved for college fellow

Fellow

A fellow in the broadest sense is someone who is an equal or a comrade. The term fellow is also used to describe a person, particularly by those in the upper social classes. It is most often used in an academic context: a fellow is often part of an elite group of learned people who are awarded...

s. He contributed a haiku

Haiku

' , plural haiku, is a very short form of Japanese poetry typically characterised by three qualities:* The essence of haiku is "cutting"...

 to the 2001 anthology, Chatter of Choughs, which was devoted to the heraldic symbol of St Edmund Hall, the Cornish Chough.

Fukuda died suddenly on 16 November 2003.

The 18th Comparative Law and Politics Symposium held at the University of Tokyo on 2004-09-29, entitled "Republicanism in Historical Contexts", was dedicated to the memory of Arihiro Fukuda.

Contributions to scholarship

One of Fukuda's main contributions to the history of political thought is a critique of J.G.A. Pocock

J.G.A. Pocock

John Greville Agard Pocock , as a writer known as J. G. A. Pocock, is a historian noted for his trenchant studies of republicanism in the early modern period , for his treatment of Edward Gibbon and his contemporaries as historians of Enlightenment, and, in historical method, for his contributions...

's understanding of republicanism. According to Eric M. Nelson

Eric M. Nelson

Eric Nelson is an American historian and Professor of Government at Harvard University.He received his A.B. from Harvard University and his PhD from The University of Cambridge ....

, Fukuda has argued for seeing Renaissance republicanism as not only a political structure, but also as an ethical position.

In Sovereignty and the Sword, Fukuda is credited with offering a new interpretation of Harrington's ideas on republicanism, based on a "post-Pocockian analysis".