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Edwin Oldfather Reischauer (October 15, 1910 – September 1, 1990) was the leading U.S. educator and noted scholar of the history and culture of Japan, and of East Asia. From 1961–66, he was the U.S. ambassador to Japan.

Education and academic life

Growing up in Tokyo, Reischauer attended the American School in Japan. He graduated with a B.A. from Oberlin in 1931. On his 75th birthday, he recalled publicly that his life aim in 1931 was to draw attention to Asia.^[1]

He earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1939. He was a student of Prof. Serge Elisséeff, who had been the first Western graduate of the University of Tokyo.^[2] His doctoral dissertation was "Nittō guhō junrei gyōki: Ennin's Diary of His Travels in T'ang China, 838-847."^[3] The work demonstrates the level of sinological scholarship a student of Japanese was expected to demonstrate at that time.^[2]

Most of his teaching career was spent at Harvard. During 40 years in Cambridge classrooms, he also became the director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute and chairman of the Department of Far Eastern Languages. In a Farewell Lecture at the Yenching Institute in 1981, students had to compete for seats with faculty colleagues, university officials and a television crew from Japan. In this crowded context, he said, "As I remember, there were only two graduate students interested in East Asian studies when I first came here: myself and my brother."^[4]

In 1956, Professor Reischauer was a widower with three children when author James A. Michener introduced him to Haru Matsukata, who would become his second wife. As teen-agers, it turned out, they had gone to the same Tokyo high school, where she had had a secret crush on him. She and her husband became a formidable team.^[5] The home they made together is maintained and used today as the Edwin O. Reischauer Memorial House.

In 1973, he was the founder of the Japan Institute, which was renamed the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies in his honor when he turned 75 in 1985.

Reischauer was also honored in 1985 by the opening of the Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. Speaking at the dedication ceremonies in Baltimore, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a former student, described Prof. Reischauer as being "what a teacher is meant to be, one who can change the life of his students." At the same event, Japan's Ambassador Nabuo Matsunaga read a personal message from Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, who observed, "I know of no other man who has so thoroughly understood Japan."^[1] Reischauer has used his in-depth knowledge of Japanese history to publish a book called Japan: Story of a Nation. Reischauer published a total of 5 editions of his book, each time adding more to the contents.

With George M. McCune, Reischauer worked to develop the McCune-Reischauer romanization of Korean. Reischauer regarded the hangul alphabet as "perhaps the most scientific system of writing in general use in any language."^[6]

Role during World War II

During World War II, Reischauer was the Japan expert for the U.S. Army Intelligence Service, and a myth developed that he prevented the bombing of Kyoto during the war,^[7] as explained by Robert Jungk in Brighter Than a Thousand Suns: A personal history of the atomic scientists:

"On the short list of targets for the atom bomb, in addition to Hiroshima, Kokura and Niigata, was the Japanese city of temples, Kyoto. When the expert on Japan, Professor Edwin O. Reischauer, heard this terrible news, he rushed into the office of his chief, Major Alfred MacCormack, in a department of the Army Intelligence Service. The shock caused him to burst into tears. MacCormack, a cultivated and humane New York lawyer, thereupon managed to persuade Secretary of War Stimson to reprieve Kyoto and have it crossed off the black list."^[8]

In his autobiography, Reischauer specifically refuted that validity of this broadly-accepted myth:

"I probably would have done this if I had ever had the opportunity, but there is not a word of truth to it. As has been amply proved by my friend Otis Cary of Doshisha in Kyoto, the only person deserving credit for saving Kyoto from destruction is Henry L. Stimson, the Secretary of War at the time, who had known and admired Kyoto ever since his honeymoon there several decades earlier."^[9]

Illness and death

In 1964, while serving as Ambassador to Japan, Reischauer was stabbed by a mentally disturbed youth. He received a blood transfusion and recovered from the wound, but the transfusion inflicted him with hepatitis. He never fully recovered, and though he continued to work and lead an active life, he died of its complications after over 25 years.^[10]

Select bibliography

• 1939 -- The Romanization of the Korean language, Based Upon Its Phonetic Structure with G. M. McCune
• 1942 -- Elementary Japanese for University Students with S. Elisséeff
• 1955 -- Ennin's Diary : The Record of a Pilgrimage to China in Search of the law (translated from Chinese), Ronald Press
• 1955 -- Wanted: An Asian Policy
• 1956 -- Japan, Past and Present, Knopf
• 1957 -- The United States and Japan, Viking
• 1958 -- Our Asian Frontiers of Knowledge
• 1960 -- East Asia: The Great Tradition with J. K. Fairbank
• 1965 -- East Asia, The Modern Transformation with J. K. Fairbank, A. M. Craig, Houghton Mifflin
• 1965 -- A History of East Asian Civilization
• 1968 -- Beyond Vietnam: The United States and Asia, Vintage
• 1972 -- A New Look at Modern History, Hara Shobo
• 1972 -- Translations from Early Japanese Literature with Joseph K. Yamagiwa, Harvard University Press
• 1973 -- Toward the 21st century: Education for a Changing World Knopf
• 1977 -- The Japanese Belknap Press
• 1986 -- The United States and Japan in 1986: Can the Partnership Work?(Forward by Reischauer)
• 1986 -- My life Between Japan and America Harper and Row
• 1988 -- The Japanese Today: Change and Continuity Tuttle Publishing
• 1989 -- Nihon no kokusaika Raishaw Hakushi to no taiwa (Internationalization of Japan: Conversations with Dr. Reischauer). Bungei Shunju
• 1989 -- Japan, Tradition and Transformation, Houghton Mifflin
• 1990 -- Japan: The Story of a Nation, McGraw-Hill

Honors

• Japan Foundation Award, 1975^[11]

Notable students

• Gail Lee Bernstein, (University of Arizona)
• Sen. Jay Rockefeller
• John W. Dower, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

References

Further reading

• Jungk, Robert. (1959). Brighter Than a Thousand Suns: A personal history of the atomic scientists. New York: Harcourt Brace.
• Reischauer, Edwin. (1986). My Life Between Japan And America. New York: Harper & Row.
• Schulman, Frank Joseph. (1970). Japan and Korea: An Annotated Bibliography of Doctoral Dissertations in Western Languages, 1877-1969. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-714-62691-0
• Chapin, Emerson. "Edwin Reischauer, Diplomat and Scholar, Dies at 79," New York Times. September 2, 1990.
• Deptula, Nancy Monteith and Michael M. Hess. (1996). The Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies: A Twenty-Year Chronicle. Cambridge: Reischauer Institute, Harvard University.
• Haberman, Clyde. "Books, East and West: My Life Between Japan and America by Edwin O. Reischauer," New York Times. August 20, 1986.
• McDowell, Edwin. "Major Encyclopedia on Japan Written In English." New York Times. October 11, 1983.
• Zurndorfer, Harriet Thelma. (1995). China Bibliography: A Research Guide to Reference Works About China Past and Present. Leiden: Brill Publishers. 10-ISBN 9-004-04487-6; 10-ISBN 9-004-10278-7; 13-ISBN 978-9-004-10278-1 (cloth) [reprinted by University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1999. 10-ISBN 0-824-82212-9; 13-ISBN 978-0-824-82212-5 (paper)

See also

• Edwin O. Reischauer Memorial House
• McCune-Reischauer romanization