Dr. Beatrice Bodart Bailey

Biography

Beatrice M. Bodart-Bailey completed her undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the Australian National University (ANU). She served as a visiting professor at the University of Ottawa from 1982 to 1986, establishing the teaching of Japanese history. She later returned to Canberra as a research fellow at the Research School of Pacific Studies, where she translated the manuscripts of German physician Engelbert Kaempfer, who visited Japan from 1690 to 1692. In 1990, during the 300th anniversary of Kaempfer's arrival in Japan, she was honored with a personal audience with the Imperial Majesty of Japan (now Emperor Emeritus) to inform her research on Kaempfer. Her notable publications include 'Kemperu Tokugawa Tsunayoshi' and an annotated translation of Kaempfer's manuscript, 'Kaempfer's Japan: Tokugawa Culture Observed', published by the University of Hawai'i Press in 1999. She was appointed as a professor at the Department of Economics of Kobe University from 1997 to 1999 and later helped establish the Faculty of Comparative Culture at Otsuma Women's University, where she taught until her retirement in 2015. Bodart-Bailey has written 8 books in English and Japanese and 34 chapters in books and academic journals, with ongoing work on an English biography of Engelbert Kaempfer.

Research Interests

Experience