Constantine Nomikos Vaporis
Constantine N. Vaporis received Ph.D. in history at the Princeton University. He currently teaches Japanese and East Asian History at University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). He has received numerous fellowships for research in Japanese history including a Fulbright Scholar’s Award and an NEH Fellowship for College Teachers. He is the author of Breaking Barriers: Travel and the State in Early Modern Japan; Tour of Duty: Samurai, Military Service in Edo and the Culture of Early Modern Japan; Nihonjin to sankin kôtai [The Japanese and Alternate Attendance]; Voices of Early Modern Japan. Contemporary Accounts of Daily Life during the Age of the Shoguns; and The Samurai Encyclopedia. A Comprehensive Guide to Japan's Elite Warrior Class; and the forthcoming The Samurai in Twelve Lives. He also teaches courses on Japan, East Asia and Asia-Pacific for various government agencies.
Vaporis was awarded the 2013-2016 UMBC Presidential Research Professorship, 2023-24 Lipitz Research Professorship; and selected for the ASIANetwork Speakers Bureau for two two-year periods, 2016-20.
Updated April 2024
Stories from This Author
James Clavell’s Shōgun is Reimagined for a New Generation of TV Viewers
April 1, 2024 • Constantine Nomikos Vaporis
In 1980, when James Clavell’s blockbuster historical novel Shōgun was turned into a TV miniseries, some 33% of American households with a television tuned in. It quickly became one of the most viewed miniseries to date, second only to Roots. I’m a historian of Japan who specializes in the history of the Tokugawa, or early modern era – a period from 1603 to 1868, during which the bulk of the action in “Shōgun” takes place. As a first-year graduate student, I …
