About: Aida Yūji

Aida Yūji (会田 雄次, 5 March 1916 – 17 September 1997) was a Japanese historian specialising in the Renaissance. He was active as a conservative thinker, commentator and major exponent of the Nihonjinron. He was born in Kyōto on 5 March 1916. He graduated from Kyoto University in 1940 and had his master's degree in history interrupted in 1943, when he was drafted into the Imperial Japanese Army. He participated in the Burma campaign of 1944 as an infantryman. He surrendered to the British Army at the war's end and was detained at a prisoner-of-war camp in the British colony of Burma. His experiences in the camp are described in his best-selling memoir, Aaron Shūyōjo (1962). Upon his repatriation in 1947, he began to teach at Kobe University. He was appointed full professor at Kyoto University