Shin'ichirō Tawata

Shin'ichirō Tawata (, Tawata Shin'ichirō, 1947 – 15 May 2026) was a Japanese linguist who specialised in Japanese linguistics and historical linguistics. He was a professor emeritus at Hiroshima University.

Life and career Tawata was born in 1947 in Okinawa Prefecture, and raised in Ginowan.

Throughout his career, Tawata received several major accolades for his dialectological research. In 1984, he won the Kinjō Chōei Award from the Okinawa Cultural Association for his historical studies on Ryukyuan phonology. In 1994, he was awarded the Okinawa Study Encouragement Prize by the Okinawa Association for his research on historical Korean records related to Okinawa. In 2021, he received the prestigious Shinmura Izuru Prize for his monograph, Historical Study on the Morphological Changes of Okinawan Verbs.

Tawata died from pancreatic cancer on 15 May 2026, at the age of 78.

Selected publications A Study of the "Ryūkyū Luzon Hyōkaeroku": Customs and Language of Ryukyu and Luzon Two Hundred Years Ago , Musashino Shoin, 1994. A Historical Study of the Phonetics and Phonology of the Okinawan Language Centered on Foreign Materials , Musashino Shoin, 1997. A Study of Chinese Character Materials in the Okinawan Language , Keisuishe, 1998. A Historical Study of Okinawan Phonology , Keisuisha, 2010. Thinking About Changes in the Okinawan Language Through Toponyms: For Example, How "Zerikaku" (Jichaku) Became "Jicchaku" , Keisuisha, 2012. A Historical Study on the Morphological Changes of Okinawan Verbs , Musashino Shoin, 2019.

Co-authored & Edited Departure for Japanese , Kindai Bungeisha, 1993. System and Structure of Language , Lecture Series on Japanese Language Education Vol. 6, 3A Network, 2006.