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Concept
Edwin O. Reischauer
Summary
Edwin Oldfather Reischauer (ˈraɪʃaʊ.ər; October 15, 1910 – September 1, 1990) was an American diplomat, educator, and professor at Harvard University. Born in Tokyo to American educational missionaries, he became a leading scholar of the history and culture of Japan and East Asia. Together with George M. McCune, a scholar of Korea, in 1939 he developed the McCune–Reischauer romanization of the Korean language.
Reischauer became involved in helping create US policy toward East Asia during and after World War II. President John F. Kennedy appointed Reischauer as the United States Ambassador to Japan, where he served from 1961 to 1966. Reischauer founded the Japan Institute at Harvard University in 1973 and was its founding director. It was later named in honor of him.
Reischauer was born in Tokyo, Japan, the son of Helen Sidwell (Oldfather) and August Karl Reischauer, Presbyterian educational missionaries. His father helped found the Tokyo Woman's Christian University along with Nitobe Inazo and Yasui Tetsu. His mother founded the Japan Deaf Oral School, the first of its kind in Japan. He and his younger brother Robert attended the American School in Japan before going to the United States for college. Both did graduate work in Asian studies. Edwin graduated with a AB from Oberlin in 1931. On his 75th birthday, Reischauer recalled publicly that his aim in life after graduating in 1931 was to draw American attention to Asia.
Reischauer earned his PhD from Harvard University in 1939. He was a student of the Russian-French Japanologist Serge Elisséeff, who had been the first Western graduate of the University of Tokyo. His doctoral dissertation was "Nittō guhō junrei gyōki: Ennin's Diary of His Travels in T'ang China, 838–847," a study and translation of the Japanese monk Ennin's travelogues on his journeys in China during the Tang dynasty. Ennin's work, (入唐求法巡礼行記; Middle Chinese: Nyip-Dang gjuw-pjop zwin-léi hæng-kì), is written in Classical Chinese. Reischauer's work shows the high level of Sinological scholarship that a graduate student was expected to demonstrate.
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