We note with great sadness the passing of Professor Theodore Bestor on July 1, following a long battle with cancer. Professor Bestor was the Reischauer Institute Professor of Social Anthropology and Japanese Studies at Harvard, having previously taught at Columbia University (1986-1993) and Cornell University (1993-2001). He served as Chair of the Department of Anthropology […]
Kenneth Kazuo Tanaka was born on February 10, 1935 in the small town of Kasumi on the northern coast of Hyogo Prefecture. He was the eldest son and one of six children born to Kyozen and Kinue Tanaka. His father was a Buddhist minister at the Gangyouji JodoShu Temple. Although Kenneth was to be a […]
Ezra F. Vogel (1930–2020) was a lifetime member of the Association for Asian Studies. This small band of colleagues and friends were assembled from the late 1960s, under Ezra Vogel’s direction and encouragement, to support each other as we moved through our graduate student life passages. Ezra (and yes, he insisted on being called “Ezra”) […]
Roger L. Janelli, an anthropologist and folklorist, passed away in the early morning of January 19, 2021 in Seoul. Janelli was among the first generation of Korean folklore and anthropology scholars in the United States, and his work as an educator, researcher, and writer was critical to the foundation of Korean Studies. He was Professor […]
It with great sadness we report the death of our colleague, teacher, and friend, former AAS President Tetsuo Najita, who died peacefully at home on January 11, 2021 in Kamuela, Hawaii after a long illness. Known widely as “Tets,” Najita was a pre-eminent scholar of early modern and modern Japanese intellectual history, political economy, and […]
Sue-Je L. Gage, a cultural anthropologist and pioneering scholar in the study of Amerasians in South Korea, passed away suddenly on May 10, 2020. She was an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Affiliated Faculty in the Center for the Study of Culture, Race and Ethnicity and Women and Gender Studies at Ithaca College, where she […]
By Carol Gluck Readers, writers, and scholars in Japan and the West celebrated the life and work of Donald Keene in the days after his death on February 24. At the same time, a smaller, but still quite large, group of his former students consoled one another in criss-crossing e-mails that recounted the importance of […]
Wm. Theodore “Ted” de Bary passed away on July 14 at the age of 97. Professor Emeritus at Columbia University and author of some of the most important foundation texts in the field of Asian Studies, de Bary was a longtime member of the AAS and served as President in 1969-70. I asked Columbia professor […]
By John Stratton Hawley It is my sad duty to report that Ainslie Embree died on the morning of June 6, 2017 at the age of 96. Anyone who knew him will remember his capacious intellect, his deep belief that the past is important to know, and equally, that the present is important to live. […]
