Ryūsaku Tsunoda

Ryūsaku Tsunoda
角田 柳作
Ryūsaku Tsunoda in his Columbia University classroom
Born(1877-09-08)September 8, 1877
DiedNovember 29, 1964(1964-11-29) (aged 87)
Honolulu, Hawaii, United States
OccupationJapanese studies

Ryūsaku Tsunoda (角田 柳作, Tsunoda Ryūsaku, 8 September 1877 - 29 November 1964) was a Japanese scholar and is known as the "father of Japanese studies" at Columbia University.[1] He was directly responsible for developing the Japanese language and literature collection at Columbia's library.[2] Prominent among the former-students who credit his influence as formative is Donald Keene,[3] who had himself become a later Dean of Japanese studies in the United States.

Biography

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Tsunoda was the youngest of seven children born to a family of peasants in Japan. He studied at Waseda University, and later developed interest in the United States. [4]

Keene's own perspective on Tsunoda was expressed in a lecture given at Waseda University in 1994:

"His vocation was teaching, not writing. His joy as a teacher lay in communicating knowledge directly and enthusiastically to his students. ... As one of his students, I feel it regrettable that Prof. Tsunoda is not known just because he did not publish anything."[5]

Selected works

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In an overview of writings by and about Tsunoda, OCLC/WorldCat lists roughly 50 works in 100+2 publications in 4 languages and 2,000+ library holdings.[6]

This list is not finished; you can help Wikipedia by adding to it.

Notes

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References

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