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Guardians of the Soul: Angels and Innocents, Mourners and Saints, Indiana's remarkable cemetery sculpture
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West Springfield Massachusetts: Stories Carved in Stone by Rusty Clark features information on early New England gravestone carvers with more than two hundred photos and illustrations. Please visit the Dog Pond Press website.
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Students Make Yearly Pilgrimage To Grave Of Japanese Professor |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Thursday, 04 August 2005 |
Students Make Yearly Pilgrimage To Grave Of Japanese Professor
Kanichi Asakawa opposed the military buildup of imperial Japan and, during World War II, wrote to top politicians in both countries, urging peace.
By MATT APUZZO
& ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published on 8/3/2005
New London Day
New Haven, CT -- Hidden among patriots, industrialists and scholars buried in one of Colonial America's oldest cemeteries, lies a tombstone not on the tourist brochure.
The plot belongs to Kanichi Asakawa, and a group of Japanese middle schoolers flew thousands of miles to see it Tuesday. They won contests to be here, to take a trip to the United States that doesn't include the New York skyline, the Grand Canyon or the Golden Gate Bridge.
The eager schoolchildren didn't even stop at the nearby graves of Roger Sherman, Noah Webster or Eli Whitney. Instead, they simply left flowers on Asakawa's grave and knelt together before his seldom-visited tombstone.
One of the first Japanese scholars hired as a professor in the United States, Asakawa is credited as one of the founders of East Asian studies in the United States. He was a frequent lecturer on Japanese relations during World War II, even as many Japanese were detained in internment camps. Yet he remains a relative unknown, except with the fiercely loyal group of Japanese scholars and historians fighting to keep his memory alive.
“We follow his steps, back 100 years ago,†Kawasaki Yasuhiro, the school administrator who organizes the yearly student trips to New Haven, said through a translator.
Asakawa's ascent from the son of a poor samurai to Dartmouth student to Yale professor has developed nearly a folklore status among scholars. They say he was such a devoted scholar that while studying the English dictionary, he would memorize the pages, then eat them, until he consumed the entire book. “He got the best grades in his class,†Japanese Consul General Hiroyasu Ando said in a speech at Yale last year, “and he delivered his graduation address in perfect English.â€
Asakawa came to the United States in 1894 and Dartmouth believes he was the first Japanese student to study there. He began teaching at Yale in the 1906, becoming a full professor in 1937.
“Before Pearl Harbor, there may have been about five scholars in the United States who knew anything about Japan,†said Harvard history professor Akira Iriye.
Asakawa translated the centuries-old “Documents of Iriki,†which allowed English scholars to study Japanese feudal history. He donated 45,000 volumes of Japanese texts to the Library of Congress and more than 21,000 to Yale, forming the foundation of their Japanese collections. “He studied Japan from the outside,†Yasuhiro said. “During that time, people in the world didn't know how to think of Japan.â€
Asakawa opposed the military buildup of imperial Japan and, during World War II, wrote to top politicians in both countries, urging peace. He wrote to President Roosevelt, describing the need for a plan to rebuild Japan after the war.
“He's associated in Japan with a free speech movement and a pacifist movement,†said Edward Kamens, a Yale professor of East Asian studies. “He's been lionized in that sense in the postwar period.â€Wataru Hashimoto, 14, said he'd like to study in the United States someday.
“He could do it back then, a very different time,†Hashimoto said through a translator. “Now it's even easier to go overseas. If he could do that a hundred years ago, I could do it now.â€
In his hometown of Nihonmatsu, the schools hold an essay contest for students who want to visit Dartmouth and Yale.
“I wanted to know how he worked for peace,†said Anzai Yumi, 14, who won a seat on the trip with an essay on Asakawa's peace lectures.
Asakawa died in 1948 at the age of 77. According to a biographical article on file at Yale, the American military newspaper Stars and Stripes wrote an article commemorating his life, and flags were flown at half staff over the U.S. base in Yokosuka.
Gustav Ranis, a Yale professor of international economics, said he is trying to gather support for the construction of a peace garden on campus that would bear Asakawa's name.
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Taphophilia?
taphophilia (taf′ō-fil′ē-ă)
ORIGIN:
From the Greek words taphos, meaning "tomb" or "sepulcher" and philia, meaning "attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something"
DEFINITION: 1. An excessive interest in graves and cemeteries. 2. A love or fondness for funerals, graves, and cemeteries. 3. In psychiatry, a morbid attraction to graves and cemeteries
Quote Repository
“Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives.” A Sachs
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