His PhD was conferred by the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs in 1996.
[2] Suganuma is Associate Professor of Geography at Oberlin University in Tokyo.
His major thesis is that people living in different places during different periods have different concepts of territorial space.
[3] Suganuma is known for arguing "if there is a flash point to ignite a third Sino-Japanese War, it will be the ownership of the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea".
[4] In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about Unryu Suganuma, OCLC/WorldCat encompasses roughly 7 works in 12 publications in 2 languages and 461 library holdings.