Ian Nish

A specialist in Japanese studies, he was Emeritus Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

His school announced a government program for volunteers who wanted to learn difficult Oriental languages, but he was too young then to apply.

Three years later — not yet 18 but in the army and, with infantry and artillery training, posted to India — he put in for a crash course in Japanese and was accepted.

In that role, he and others were not called upon to draw on their knowledge of the older 'kanji' which they had learned, since a working list of 1,800 characters had been specified by the Ministry of Education for use in the press from New Year's Eve, 1946.

On his return to England, he embarked on 30 years of "congenial teaching" as a Japan specialist in the international history department at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

He then accepted the position of honorary senior research associate of the Suntory Toyota International Centre for Economics and Related Disciplines (STICERD).

This position proved invaluable in enabling Nish to complete certain research projects which were crowded out by administrative chores during his last years of teaching.

[6] In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about Nish, OCLC/WorldCat encompasses roughly 200+ works in 300+ publications in 4 languages and 7,000+ library holdings.