John Whitney Hall

John Whitney Hall (September 13, 1916 – October 21, 1997),"John Whitney Hall papers," Yale University Library was an American academic, historian, editor and professor at Yale University.Scott, Janny. "John W. Hall, Historian of Japan, Dies at 81," New York Times, October 27, 1997.

Early years
Hall was born in Kyoto in 1916. He lived in Japan until he was a teenager. According to his wife, "Being brought up in Japan and by missionaries, he was a very straight-arrow kind of person. There is this kind of missionary feeling, that you must make something of this [life], not just throw it away."

At Amherst College, he was awarded a degree in 1939. He returned to Japan an instructor in English at Doshisha University in Kyoto until 1941.

Hall earned his Ph.D. in East Asian languages and literatures from Harvard University in 1950. At Harvard, he became one of the first graduate students to study under Edwin O. Reischauer.

Career
In 1948, Hall began teaching at the University of Michigan.Conlon, Frank. F. (1997). "John Whitney Hall, 1916-1997," World History Archives. Retrieved 2012-12-6.

His earliest book was Tanuma Okitsugu, 1718-1787.Hardacre, Helen. (1998). The Postwar Development of Japanese Studies in the United States, p. 92.  Among other interests, his research focused on the Kamakura period in the history of Japan.Hardacre, p. 57.

He taught at Yale University until he retired in 1983. Yale's John W. Hall Lecture Series in Japanese Studies was established in his memory."Ishida Gives Hall Lecture," MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, Fall 2010. Retrieved 2011-12-6.

Selected works
In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about John Whitney Hall, OCLC/WorldCat encompasses roughly 90+ works in 200+ publications in 8 languages and 10,000+ library holdingsWorldCat Identities: Hall, John Whitney 1916- 

 Japanese History; a Guide to Japanese Reference and Research Materials (1954)
 Tanuma Okitsugu, 1719–1788, Forerunner of Modern Japan (1955)
 Government and Local Power in Japan, 500 to 1700; a Study Based on Bizen Province (1960)
 Japanese History: New Dimensions of Approach and Understanding (1961)
 Twelve Doors to Japan (1965) with Richard K. Beardsley
 Studies in the Institutional History of Early Modern Japan (1968) with Marius Jansen
 Japan, from Prehistory to Modern Times (1970)
 Japan in the Muromachi Age  (1977) with Toyoda Takeshi
 The Cambridge history of Japan  (1988-  )

Honors
 Order of the Sacred Treasure
 Japan Foundation Award, 1976

Since 1994, the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) has awarded the John Whitney Hall Book Prize for an English language book published on Japan or Korea.Since 2010, the James B. Palais Book Prize  of the AAS has honored work on Korean subjects.

 References 

Other websites
 John Whitney, 1916-  at Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) 

Category:1916 births
Category:1997 deaths
Category:American Japanologists
Category:Harvard University alumni
Category:American historians
Category:American editors