Scholar-Statesman

When Wanted: An Asian Policy appeared in the bookstores early this spring, reviewers welcomed it as a new, timely brief look at American strategy in Asia. The author himself did not claim that the work was, strictly speaking, "scholarly." Within the following two months, however, Edwin O. Reischauer, professor of Far Eastern Languages, conclusively proved his scholarship with a detailed historical account of the wanderings of a ninth century Japanese monk, complete with a translation of the monk's diary. A two-volume work filled with 1,600 footnotes and maps of mountains and rivers that no longer exist, Ennin's Travels has been one of Reischauer's pursuits since 1935, when he first realized that the diary "is really history in big letters--much more fascinating and accurate than the famous Marco Polo story."

These two works--the first informal, current and American, the second formal, historical, and Japanese--represent distinct poles in Reischauer's career. For he is a scholar constantly concerned with current problems, a former government consultant who remained at all times an "academician" and a thoroughly American varsity tennis player with an almost intuitive understanding of his birthplace, Japan.

Reischauer's boyhood in Tokyo was neither queer nor quaint. His parents, both educational missionaries still respected throughout Japan, did their best "to make up for the distance from home by being as American as possible." When the 16-year-old Reischauer came to the United States and Oberlin College in 1927, he was therefore prepared for baseball, basketball, and varsity tennis. Whenever his Japanese background did get in the way, he tried to conceal it. "When I hitched rides. I used to make up a lot of false home towns so I wouldn't have to go through a lot of stuff about coming from Japan," he recalls. Still, his interest in the Far East was strong, and he found it "only natural to think about graduate study. It was a very normal, drifting business--no great crises or decisions."

After an M.A. from Harvard, Reischauer pursued his studies of the Far East under a fellowship from the Harvard-Yenching Institute, first in Paris, and then in China and Japan. The second World War was threatening when he returned to Harvard for his doctorate in 1939, and the U.S. Government soon called him to Washington, for the summer of 1941, as a Senior Research Analyst in the State Department. "I was writing little digests which they evidently liked," Reischauer explains. "Also, with another young fellow, I drew up a grand scheme for avoiding the war, but someone pigeon-holed it somewhere."

Reischauer's constant shuttles to and from the capital were almost a commuter's nightmare. After another year back at Harvard, he returned to Washington by direct agreement between President Conant and John J. McCloy of the War Department, where he taught a special language program for a year. It was difficult for a civilian to make his force felt, so that when he again found himself in Washington, he made certain it was as a commissioned officer. He never let military etiquette bother him, though: "I didn't know how to salute, or anything like that. There were always generals out in the front offices, but I used to go right past them to the real chief--the civilian behind the desk."

Reischauer's task was to analyze most of the important military intelligence on the Far East, which funneled through him. After the war, he shifted to the State Department, and began planning the occupation of Japan and the peace treaty. He never hesitated to speak out: "As an academician, I felt free to criticize. I acted as much like a professor as I could, since I had no government job to protect."

Throughout his government activities Reischauer had retained a desire to teach, so that when Harvard made him an associate professor in 1946, he returned to Cambridge. He had to turn down not only the State Department, which wanted him to become deputy director of the Office of Far Eastern Affairs, but also General MacArthur, who sought him for chief counter-intelligence officer and then as chief historian of the occupation. "I said no thanks to that one," Reischauer smiles. It was teaching that he preferred--in small language classes even more than in the popular "Rice Paddies," History of Far Eastern Civilization.

Naturally, Reischauer has not abandoned his interest in U.S. foreign policy. He thinks that American policy is beginning to turn a corner, and that "the shift is all in the right direction." He points out, however, that the U.S. "should be trying to prevent crises, instead of waiting for them to surprise us. It has been this way for many years now--first Japan, then China, then Korea. I don't know what's creeping up on us now, but we ought to take a look at Africa and Indonesia."

Reischauer himself will be taking a long look at the Far East for the next fourteen months. Under the auspices of the Harvard-Yenching Institute, he will be investigating "higher education in the area of Chinese civilization," as well as political situations in Formosa, Korea, Hong Kong, and Okinawa. "I don't know what the U.S. Government will think about someone out there poking around, but we'll see," he says. With his arms filled with typhoid shots and his smile as friendly as ever, Reischauer will against next year display his unique combination of the professor-statesman.