Tsuyoshi Hasegawa
長谷川毅
1941–
A historian who recast the international history of Japan's surrender
Japan's surrender in August 1945 cannot be explained by the atomic bomb alone.
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa is a Japanese-American historian of modern Russian and Soviet history, the Cold War, and Russo-Japanese relations. His work ranges across the Russian Revolution, Soviet-Japanese relations, and the international history of the Pacific War's end, linking diplomacy to social and political change. His major book, Racing the Enemy, reopened debate over Japan's surrender by arguing that the Soviet declaration of war and invasion in August 1945, not the atomic bombings alone, decisively altered Japan's strategic options.
Career timeline
- 1964Graduated from the University of Tokyo, Faculty of Liberal Arts
- 1969Earned a PhD at the University of Washington
- 1970sTaught history at the State University of New York at Oswego
- 1980–1981Published The February Revolution: Petrograd, 1917
- 1980s–1990sTaught at Hokkaido University’s Slavic Research Center
- 1998Published The Northern Territories Dispute and Russo-Japanese Relations
- 2005Published Racing the Enemy and received the Robert Ferrell Award
- 2016Retired as professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara