Shinpei Ogura

was a Japanese linguist who studied the Korean language.

Ogura is well-known in Korea for his contributions to Korean linguistics, with much of his field work and studies considered invaluable resources even in recent years. He is also considered the first modern researcher of Korean dialects, and traveled throughout the peninsula doing field research. The data he collected on dialects are still widely referred to, especially because the division of Korea in 1945 has made it difficult to study dialects on opposite ends of the peninsula.

In Korean, he is sometimes called Soch'ang Chinp'yŏng , the Korean Hanja reading of his name. ), he entered Tokyo Imperial University, where he majored in linguistics. He graduated in 1906, with a thesis on the phonology of Japanese during the Heian period. After graduating, he performed research under the guidance of notable Japanese linguist . During this period, he planned to continue studying Japanese, but in 1911, ended up moving to Korea at the age of 29 to serve as an official under the Japanese Governor-General of Korea.

Later career From August 1924 to April 1926, he studied abroad in Europe as an overseas researcher and professor at an overseas branch of Keijō Imperial University. Following this, he returned to Korea and was made a professor of linguistics at Keijō. There, he trained a number of Korean linguists. He also opened the first university library in Korea in 1926. A significant number of the notable Korean linguists and librarians from around this period were his former students.

In 1933, he was appointed professor of linguistics at Tokyo Imperial University, although he visited Korea annually to lecture. During this time, he continued publishing on Korean dialects. In 1935, he received an Imperial Prize of the Japan Academy for his contributions to East Asian linguistics and his exploration of the relationship between the Korean and Japanese languages. In 1938, he served as the first vice president of the Linguistic Society of Japan.

He retired in 1943 due to poor health, although he continued his research on Korean. He died on February 8, 1944. At the time of his death, he had been in the final stages of preparing a book of his life's research. The book was subsequently posthumously published that May by one of his students. Many of the old books that he collected throughout his research are now held in the Ogura Collection at Tokyo University.

Legacy Amongst Korean linguists, Ogura is well-known but has a mixed legacy. While he made significant contributions to the study of Korean and was sympathetic to the plight of the peninsula under the Japanese Empire, he also considered the Korean culture and civilization to be inferior to those of Japan, and saw their subjugation as a natural outcome of that.

Selected works Revised edition, 1940: .

Volume 1: . Volume 2: .