Kan'ichi Asakawa

"Kan'ichi Asakawa papers", Yale University Library was a Japanese academic, author, historian, librarian, curator and peace advocate.

 Early life 
He was born in Nihonmatsu, Japan.  He studied at Waseda University in Tokyo.

In 1899, he earned a bachelor's degree (B.A.) at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.  He continued his studies at Yale University.  He earned a doctor's degree (Ph.D.) in 1902.

 Career 
He lectured at Dartmouth in 1902.  In 1906–1907, he was a professor at Waseda.

In 1907, Asakawa was appointed curator of the East Asian Collection at Yale's Sterling Memorial Library.

Asakawa was an instructor at Yale from 1907 through 1910 when became an assistant professor. He became the first Japanese professor at a major American university. He taught history at Yale for 35 years.  Among those he influenced was John Whitney Hall.

Asakawa helped found Japan studies and Asian studies in the United States.

 Politics 
After the end of the Russo-Japanese War, Asakawa began to speak out against the growth of militarism in Japan. In 1941, he tried to prevent war between the US and Japan.

 Selected works 
In an overview of writings by and about Kan'ichi Asakawa, OCLC/WorldCat includes roughly 110+ works in 220+ publications in 5 languages and 2,400+ library holdings. WorldCat Identities: Asakawa, Kanʼichi 1873–1948
 The Early Institutional Life of Japan. (1903)See  The Early Institutional Life of Japan; full-text book at openlibrary.org.
 The Russo-Japanese Conflict: Its Causes and Issues  (1905)
 The Origin of Feudal Land-Tenure in Japan (1914)
 The life of a monastic shō in medieval Japan (1919)
 The documents of Iriki, illustrative of the development of the feudal institutions of Japan (1922)

His works also included contributions to the publications Japan edited by Frank Brinkley (1904); the History of Nations Series (1907); China and the Far East (1910); Japan and Japanese-American Relations (1912); and The Pacific Ocean in History (1917).

 Legacy 
Asakawa lived most of his life in the United States.  In the history of the Japanese-Americans, he is considered among the Issei who were immigrants born in Japan.DiscoverNikkei:  "Asakawa bio". Retrieved 2012-11-25.

In 2007 the Asakawa Japanese garden at Yale, designed by Shinichiro Abe,  was dedicated to mark the centennial of Asakawa's appointment as an instructor of history at Yale.

 Related pages 
 List of historians by continent

 References 

 Further reading 



 Other websites 
  Asakawa, Kanʾichi, 1873–1948 at Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) 
 The Asakawa Centennial at Yale 
 "Utsukushima Fukushima Story – The dreamer : Kan'ichi Asakawa" 
 "The Treaty of Portsmouth by Kan'ichi Asakawa" 
  "Asakawa Web-Museum by Asakawa Peace Association" 
 Kanichi Asakawa gravesite

Category:1873 births
Category:1948 deaths
Category:Asian historians
Category:Japanese scientists
Category:Japanologists
Category:People from Fukushima Prefecture
Category:Waseda University alumni
Category:Yale University alumni
Category:Librarians
Category:Dartmouth College faculty