About: Richard Mason (historian)

Richard Henry Pitt Mason (3 March 1934 – 27 June 2009), also known as R.H.P. Mason, was an Australian academic, historian and Japanologist, and professor at the Australian National University in Canberra, before retiring in 1993. Mason was born and raised in England, following a year of military service, he began studying Japanese history under Carmen Blacker at Cambridge University, which he attended from 1954 to 1958. His PhD dissertation, completed at Australia National University, and published as a book in 1969, was entitled "Japan's First General Election, 1890."