There, with his colleague, the anthropologist Miyata Noboru (1936–2000), he ran an interdisciplinary seminar at the newly founded Institute for the Study of Japanese Folklore [ja] established in 1982.
His scrupulous examination of primary sources enabled him to reconstruct the outlooks of a variety of non-agrarian peasant communities that shared little in common with the image of "the Japanese" constructed by scholarship and nationalist historians.
He arrived at the conclusion that medieval Japan was neither a single culturally nor socially integrated state, but rather a mosaic of quite distinct societies, some of which knew nothing, for example, about the Japanese emperor.
"[1] Simultaneously, Johnston writes that Despite his prolific output and stature in Japan, only a handful of papers and only one book (although even that remains unpublished) by Amino have been translated in the English language.
Finally, although much of his work would certainly be of interest to students and scholars of Japanese history outside Japan, the shortage of translations remains an obstacle.As mentioned above, a very readable account of some of Amino's major findings is now available in English.