Ronald Philip DoreCBEFBA (1 February 1925 – 14[3][4] November 2018) was a British sociologist specialising in Japanese economy and society and the comparative study of types of capitalism. He was an associate of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics and was a fellow of the British Academy, the Japan Academy, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The citation for his eminent scholar award from the Academy of International Business describes him as "an outstanding scholar whose deep understanding of the empirical phenomena he studied and ability to build on it to develop theoretical contributions are highly respected not only by sociologists but also by economists, anthropologists, historians, and comparative business systems scholars".[5]
Dore began to learn Japanese in 1942 as part of an 18-month Board of Education initiative to train sixth form boys in languages critical to the war effort.[4][7] He was one of thirty students who were enrolled in its Japanese language programme.[8] Originally, he applied to study Turkish as his first preference, and Chinese as his second, only to find that he had been enrolled in the Japanese course.
After finishing the course, Dore injured his knee during basic training and was invalided out of his army posting.[7] Due to a shortage of teachers, he arrived back at SOAS to teach Japanese to servicemen. Notable pupils of Dore at SOAS included Hugh Cortazzi.[7]
Dore finished his Bachelor of Arts degree (first class) in Modern Japanese at SOAS in 1947.[9] His first trip to Japan was in 1950, arriving in Kobe.[6]
Dore embarked upon his postgraduate research at SOAS in 1947. This led to publication of his first book, City Life in Japan: A Study of a Tokyo Ward, in 1958. Thereafter, he conducted research on a broad variety of topics in Japan, including education,[10]land reform[11] and village life.[12] He also engaged in a number of studies comparing Japanese social organizational forms and institutions with those found in other parts of the world.[13][14] This resulted from earlier comparative research on development while employed at the Institute of Development StudiesatSussex University[15] and led to his important analyses of Japan's post-war industrial system[16] and of different forms of stock market and welfare capitalism.[17]
Many of Dore's publications were translated and published in Japan, where he was greatly admired. His facility in the Japanese language as a foreigner was unsurpassed, and he would frequently deliver lectures in that language with notes hardly filling a half A4 size sheet of paper.
While at the Institute of Development studies, Dore served as the doctoral supervisor to several notable academics, including Jonathan Unger[18] and Keith Lewin.
^Education in Tokugawa Japan. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1965.
^Land Reform in Japan. London, New York, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1959.
^Shinohata: A Portrait of a Japanese Village. London: Allen Lane, 1978.
^British Factory-Japanese Factory: The Origins of Diversity in Industrial Relations. London: Allen & Unwin, 1973.
^The Diploma Disease: Education, Qualifications, and Development. Allen & Unwin, 1976.
^The Late Development Effect. Communication 103. Sussex: Institute of Development Studies, 1972.
^Flexible Rigidities: Industrial Policy and Structural Adjustment in the Japanese Economy, 1970-1980. Stanford, CA.: Stanford University Press, 1986.
^Stock Market Capitalism: Welfare Capitalism: Japan and Germany versus the Anglo-Saxons. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
^Chan, Anita; Madsen, Richard; Unger, Jonathan (April 2009). Chen Village: Revolution to Globalization. University of California Press. p. vii. ISBN978-0-520-25931-7.
