Daniele Lauro

Daniele Lauro is a political and cultural historian of 19th and 20th century Japan, and he is currently an Assistant Teaching Professor of Asian History in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies at Arizona State University. His research interests include political rituals, Japanese material culture, public history, Japanese paleography, and the emergence of the modern Japanese nation-state in the mid-19th century.

Lauro's current book project investigates the function of rituals in the construction, articulation, and preservation of power and political legitimacy by the Tokugawa shoguns, the military chieftains who ruled Japan from 1603 to 1868. As a case study Lauro considers the ritual practice known as Nikkō shasan, i.e the pilgrimage performed by Tokugawa shoguns from the seat of the government, Edo (present-day Tokyo), to Nikko, a mountainous locality where the regime’s founder, Tokugawa Ieyasu, was venerated and enshrined in a majestic mausoleum. 

Lauro is the recipient of numerous research fellowships, including the Kluge Fellowship (2024), the Doris G. Quinn Fellowship (2018-19), the Japanese Government (MEXT) Research Fellowship (2016-18), the Toshiba International Foundation Grant (2015), and the Nippon Foundation Fellows Scholarship (2014-15). He has spent considerable time in Japan, including a two-year research stay at Waseda University.

Before joining ASU, Lauro was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University (2020-21) and he taught courses in Japanese history at George Mason University, Duke University, and Elon University. He has also collaborated with museums in the United States and Japan, including the Smithsonian Institution (Washington DC), the Ackland Art Museum (Chapel Hill), and the Tokyo Metropolitan "Edo-Tokyo" Museum (Tokyo), in developing exhibits and publications on Asian art, culture, and history.

Lauro received his BA in Comparative Languages and Literatures from the University of Naples "L'Orientale," his MA in Asian Studies from the University of Rome "La Sapienza," and his PhD in Asian History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is originally from Castellammare di Stabia, a town located along the Gulf of Naples in Southern Italy.