Ota was born in Osaka City and earned his BA (1998), MA (2000), then PhD (2007) in human sciences from Osaka University. He also completed an additional doctoral program in anthropology at Seoul National University from 2000 to 2003. Before joining NIHU, he lived in Korea for seven years.[2]
Research
Ota's research examines people's recognition of cultures. More specifically, he tries to explain how people and societies recognize their own cultural "change." What do the narratives and discourses of personal change and social shift epistemologically mean? He has pursued this question mainly through case studies of Korean political history and intellectual subculture. For example, his publications explore South Korean activists' recognition of Korean "democratization," and the cultural history of Korean scholar-bureaucrats from their descendants' point of view during the 17th to 19th centuries. Ota has also been conducting researches on Korean celadon ceramics, on oversea Koreans in Mainland China and United States, and on museum administration.[2]
