Edwin Oldfather Reischauer (/ˈraɪʃaʊ.ər/ RYSHE-ow-ər; October 15, 1910 – September 1, 1990) was an American diplomat, educator, and professor at Harvard University.
Born in Tokyo to American educational missionaries, he became a leading scholar of the history and culture of Japan and East Asia.
[1] On his 75th birthday, Reischauer recalled publicly that his aim in life after graduating in 1931 was to draw American attention to Asia.
Reischauer's work shows the high level of Sinological scholarship that a graduate student was expected to demonstrate.
In the summer of 1942, at the request of the U.S. Army Signal Corps, Reischauer started running a top-secret course at Arlington Hall in Virginia.
Arlington Hall had been a women's college, but it was taken over by the US Army Signal Intelligence Service in June 1942 and functioned like Bletchley Park in England as a secret cryptanalysis centre.
Reischauer wrote both for fellow scholars and for the general public, including Japan: Story of a Nation, which was published in several editions.
For his farewell lecture at the Yenching Institute in 1981, students had to compete for seats with faculty colleagues, university officials, and a television crew from Japan.
[9] After returning to the United States, Reischauer attracted the attention of Kennedy's transition team when he wrote an article about the protests in the prominent policy journal Foreign Affairs called "The Broken Dialogue with Japan."
[8] In fact, State Department officials viewed strong connections with an ambassador's host country with suspicion and opposed Reischauer's nomination on these grounds.
[10] He advocated and helped arrange a summit meeting between Kennedy and new Japanese prime minister Hayato Ikeda in Washington, D.C. in the summer of 1961.
Historian Nick Kapur has argued that this summit was a success, and led to a substantial realignment of the US-Japan alliance in the direction of greater mutuality.
[14] In addition, Reischauer was hospitalized in March 1964 after being stabbed by Shiotani Norikazu, a Japanese youth, in an apparent assassination attempt.
On September 14, 1942, three years before the end of World War II, Reischauer, then an instructor in Far Eastern languages at Harvard University, wrote the "Memorandum on Policy towards Japan."
"[26] In the abstract to his article, "The Reischauer Memo: Mr. Moto, Hirohito, and Japanese American Soldiers," Fujitani wrote: Already at this early date in the war, Reischauer proposed retention of the Japanese emperor as head of a postwar “puppet regime” that would serve U.S. interests in East Asia.
He reasoned that Japanese American soldiers would be useful for propaganda purposes – that is, to demonstrate to the world and particularly the “yellow and brown peoples” that the United States was not a racist nation.
Reischauer, then serving as the US Ambassador to Japan, proposed a plan to enable the US both to keep its military bases and to introduce nuclear weapons in Okinawa after the reversion of the US-occupied islands to Japanese sovereignty.
"[31] These "became key elements [of] the 1969 U.S.-Japan Okinawa Reversion Agreement," effectively making "U.S. military presence more or less permanent and maintaining the option to introduce nuclear weapons.
Ambassador to Japan Edwin O. Reischauer revealed that ...U.S. naval vessels carrying nuclear weapons have routinely visited Japanese ports—with Tokyo's tacit approval.
"[32] The secret memo also revealed Reischauer's proposed countermeasures to quell "nationalistic reaction" to continuing US military presence in Okinawa.
In his 2010 article, "'Secret' 1965 Memo Reveals Plans to Keep U.S. bases and Nuclear Weapons Options in Okinawa After Reversion," Steve Rabson, author and lecturer on Okinawan literature, history, and culture, wrote: To reduce the risk of “disturbances” in Okinawa, Reischauer proposed an increase in U.S. aid, revision of the Price Act to increase compensation for owners of land the U.S. had seized for base construction, and a loosening of the ban on flying the Japanese flag.