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Edwin Reischauer, Diplomat and Scholar, Dies at 79

Edwin Reischauer, Diplomat and Scholar, Dies at 79
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September 2, 1990, Section 1, Page 40Buy Reprints
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Edwin O. Reischauer, a scholar who specialized in East Asian affairs and who served as United States Ambassador to Japan from 1961 to 1966, died yesterday at Green Hospital of the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation La Jolla, Calif. He was 79 years old and lived in Belmont, Mass., and La Jolla.

Dr. Paul J. Pockros, a gastroenterologist at the Scripps Clinic, said Mr. Reischauer had died of complications from chronic hepatitis that he contracted from a blood transfusion some years ago. Although he had been hospitalized several times in the last year, Mr. Reischauer had continued to work on his 13th book.

Edwin Oldfather Reischauer had two lifelong attachments: Harvard University and Japan.

At Harvard his famed course on Japan, once familiarly known as ''rice paddies,'' removed much of the mystery from a far-off land for a generation of students. His influence as an expert on Japan and a wider sphere of Asian affairs extended nationally for more than a quarter of a century.

Speaking Their Own Tongue

In Japan, where he spent five and a half years as Ambassador at a critical time in Washington-Tokyo relations, he was regarded as an ideal spokesman for the United States who could address the Japanese in their own tongue and with a deep understanding of their society and culture.

Mr. Reischauer was named to the post after he wrote an article for Foreign Affairs in 1960 about what he termed the ''broken dialogue'' with Japan after a crisis over the two countries' security treaty. The article came to the attention of President John F. in Tokyo.

The professor acknowledged that he had some doubts about moving into the world of diplomacy and administering one of the largest American overseas missions. ''But I felt I had written a good deal of criticism of our Asian policy,'' he said later, ''and it was almost a case of put up or shut up.''

In Tokyo the lean, blue-eyed scholar quickly became a celebrity. He set something of a precedent by bringing into the embassy a staff of experts on Japan; he established good working relationships not only with leaders of the governing conservative party but also with members of the leftist opposition and the bureaucracy; and his name and face became known to almost everyone as a result of his extensive travels and public appearances throughout the country.

A Buffer Against Criticism

At a time when Japanese opinion was strongly critical of the United States involvement in Vietnam, the Ambassador deflected anti-American feelings by reproving the Tokyo press for what he said was a lack of objectivity.

To idealistic exponents of pacifism he would say: ''To be neutral you must be ready to be highly militarized, like Switzerland or Sweden.''

Despite his natural affection for Japan, where he was born and spent his early life, he did not hesitate to speak out frankly on American policies that were often at variance with Japanese views.

To a people with vivid recollections of World War II and hesitant about their new international role and responsibility, the energetic Ambassador, with the traditional prestige of the sensei, or teacher, preached encouragement and assurance. And in the scholarly world Professor Reischauer was one of a handful of foreigners who could lecture to experts in their own language on the history and culture of their country.

Visitors to the embassy in Tokyo sometimes asked why Mr. Reischauer had not become a missionary like his father, who was a professor of philosophy at Meiji Gakuin, a Christian institution in Tokyo. ''Ah, but I am,'' was his smiling reply.

At the end of his tenure, which won widespread praise, Mr. Reischauer expressed satisfaction that the dialogue had been reopened. ''I was sent here,'' he said, ''because of the need to re-establish communication with the Japanese people on a broad scale. That has been accomplished, and the problem is now of a different nature.''

Son of a Missionary Family

Mr. Reischauer was born Oct. 15, 1910, in Tokyo and attended the American School there. He graduated in 1931 from Oberlin College, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and received a master's degree from Harvard the next year. From 1933 to 1938 he studied in France, Japan and China on a fellowship from the Harvard-Yenching Institute of Oriental Studies.

During a three-month period in Seoul in 1938 Mr. Reischauer devised, with another American scholar, George M. McCune, the phonetic system still most commonly used in rendering the Korean language into Latin letters. He received his Ph.D. in 1939 while an instructor at Harvard.

After the outbreak of war with Japan in 1941, he served as a lieutenant colonel in intelligence and later as a special assistant in the State Department.

When the war ended he returned to Harvard to teach languages and history, write books and serve as director, from 1956 to 1961, of the Harvard-Yenching Institute. The Harvard team of Professor Reischauer and John K. Fairbank, a pioneer in China studies, came to be regarded as pre-eminent in the field of scholarship on East Asia.

Classics in Their Field

Two of Mr. Reischauer's books of that period, ''East Asia, The Great Tradition,'' written with Professor Fairbank, and ''East Asia, The Modern Transformation,'' with Mr. Fairbank and Albert M. Craig, were regarded as classics in their field and became widely used textbooks.

Mr. Reischauer was married in 1935 to Adrienne Darnton, a fellow student at the University of Paris. They had three children. Mrs. Reischauer died in 1955.

In 1956 Mr. Reischauer married Haru Matsukata, the granddaughter of a Japanese Prime Minister. Educated in the United States, she had served as correspondent for several American publications.

Though he was an effective spokesman for Washington's policies while in Tokyo, Mr. Reischauer spoke out against the American intervention in Vietnam when he returned to Harvard as a professor.

Recognition of China Urged

Mr. Reischauer, in articles and speeches, urged moves toward diplomatic recognition of China, pressed for a prompt end of the United States occupation of Okinawa and called for reconsideration of American policies in South Korea.

In 1974 he suffered a minor stroke but soon returned to his busy round of fund raising for Harvard East Asia studies.

In 1970 Knopf published his ''Japan, the Story of a Nation,'' a revision of his ''Japan, Past and Present.'' A further updating, ''The Japanese,'' in 1977, quickly came to be regarded as a definitive work. Reviewing it in The Times, Richard R. Lingeman said: ''As a whole, 'The Japanese' is the masterly work of a seasoned scholar, the culmination of years of study, the keystone in the intellectual arch between Mr. Reischauer's two countries, which he has been building so long and so well.''

On April 22, 1981, Professor Reischauer gave his final lecture at Harvard in the course he had begun teaching 50 years earlier, in a crowded hall before an audience that included colleagues, university officials and a television crew from Japan. He took note of the growth of interest in his field, saying: ''As I remember, there were only two graduate students interested in East Asian studies when I first came here: myself and my brother.''

Mr. Reischauer is survived by his wife, Haru; two daughters, Ann Heinemann of San Diego and Joan Simon of Larchmont, N.Y.; a son, Robert, who is director of the Congressional Budget Office in Washington, and nine grandchildren.

In accordance with Mr. Reischauer's wish, there will be no funeral. A memorial service will be held at Harvard at a date to be announced later.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section 1, Page 40 of the National edition with the headline: Edwin Reischauer, Diplomat and Scholar, Dies at 79. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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