A graduate of Harvard University, he specializes in the study of coups d'etat, political assassinations and military disobedience. His last two books are The Plots against Hitler (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), a study of the anti-Nazi resistance in the German army, and Curse on this Country: The Rebellious Army of Imperial Japan (Cornell University Press), on the culture of insubordination in the Japanese Imperial Army and the roots of the Pacific War. Currently, he is studying military adventurism in the East Asian sphere in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was also writing regularly for the media in Hebrew and in English on issues of military and political significance. His writing can be followed in his academia.edu page, in his blog, The Owl, and in his Amazon author page. 

 

After receiving his Master degree in history from the Hebrew University in 1965, he studied Japanese language in Tokyo, and received his Ph.D. degree from Princeton University in 1971. Since then he taught Japanese history and culture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem until his retirement in 2006. He also taught, lectured and did research at the universities of Harvard, Berkeley, Tokyo, Oxford, Cambridge, and Colorado. In 2000 the Japanese emperor bestowed on him the Order of the Sacred Treasure, Gold and Silver Star. In 2013, his book The Secret of Japan's Strength (the Japanese version of his Hebrew book Yapan bemabat ishi) was awarded the prize of the best book promoting international cultural understanding in Japan. His main books are Revolt in Japan (Princeton University Press, 1973), Politics and Culture in Wartime Japan (Clarendon Press, 1981. Paperback edition Oxford University Press, 1991), Yapan hamesoratit: tarbut ve-historia (Schocken Publishing House, 1995. Revised and expanded edition, 2001), Yapan hamodernit: tarbut ve-historia (Schocken Publishing House, 1997.), The Jews and the Japanese, (Charles E. Tuttle, 1992), Collected Writings of Ben-Ami Shillony (Japan Library, Curzon Press, 2000) Enigma of the Emperors: Sacred Subservience in Japanese History (Global Oriental, 2005). ed., The Emperors of Modern Japan (Brill, 2008), Yapan bemabat ishi (Tel Aviv: Schocken Publishing House, 2011), ed., Critical Readings on the Emperors of Japan (Leiden: Brill, 2012).