Serge Elisséeff

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Serge Elisséeff (1889-1972) was a Franco-American academic, an early Sinologist and Japanologist, and member of the faculties of the Sorbonne and Harvard. He began studying Japanese at the University of Berlin, but he transferred to Tokyo Imperial University in 1912, making him the first Westerner to do so.^[1]

Elisséeff served in 1916 as Privat-Dozent at Petrograd Imperial University, and in 1917 as Professor in the Institute for the History of Foreign Affairs in Petrograd.^[2] Many years later, his émigrée memories of chaos and fear during the Russian Revolution were stirred by the effects of pernicious McCarthyism at Harvard.^[3]

Contents 1 Orientalist 2 Harvard-Yenching Institute 3 Sorbonne 3.1 Honors 4 Selected work 5 Notes 6 References

[edit] Orientalist

Fluent in eight languages, including Chinese and Japanese, Elisseeff was renowned as one of the foremost Japanologists of his time, both in the West and in Japan. He had close personal ties to many of the greatest literary names of the first half of the century and wrote occasional articles for the Asahi Shimbun.

From 1921 to 1929, Elisséeff was the interpreter in the Japanese Imperial Embassy in Paris.

He first came to Harvard in 1932 as lecturer on Chinese and Japanese. During the 1933-1934 academic year, he returned to Paris as Director of Studies in the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. He returned to Cambridge in 1934 when Harvard offered him a professorship of Far Eastern Languages.^[2]

There was a small market for copies of Elisséeff's 1932 lecture on the occasion of the Swedish-Japanese Society's exhibition of Japanese art in Stockholm.^[4]

[edit] Harvard-Yenching Institute

Elisséeff was the first Director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute (HYI), an independent, non-profit organization founded in 1928 to further the spread of knowledge and scholarship on East and Southeast Asia.^[5]

Under the auspices of the HYI, Elisséeff established the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies in 1936. The journal publishes monograph-length scholarly articles focused on Asian humanities.^[5] His wide range of knowledge came to be reflected in the diverse character of the journal during the twenty-one years he served as its editor (1936-1957).

[edit] Sorbonne

Elisséeff became a Professor of Japanese language at the Sorbonne in Paris between 1917 and 1930.^[2]

In 1957, Elisséeff returned to Paris where he joined the faculty of the Sorbonne. His son, Vadime Elisséeff (1918 - 2002), had been offered a position as chief conservator of the Musée Guimet in 1957.

[edit] Honors

• Japan Foundation: Japan Foundation Award, 1973.^[6]

[edit] Selected work

• Elisséeff, Serge. (1944) Elementary Japanese. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 10-ISBN 0-674-24403-6; 13-ISBN 978-0-674-24403-0 (paper)
• __________ and Takaaki Matsushita. (1959). Japan: Ancient Buddhist Paintings. Greenwich, Connecticut: UNESCO & New York Graphic Society.

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Reischauer, Edwin O. "Serge Elisséeff," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 20, No. 1/2 (Jun., 1957), pp. 1-35.
• Rogala, Joseph. (2001). "A Collector's Guide to Books on Japan in English: A Select List of Over 2500 Titles. London:Routledge.
• "Serge Elisséeff: 1889-1975," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 35, 1975 (1975), pp. 12-13.
• West, Philip. (1976). Yenching University and Sino-Western Relations, 1916-1952. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• Zurndorfer, Harriet Thelma. (1995). China Bibliography: A Research Guide to Reference Works About China Past and Present. Leiden: Brill Publishers. 10-ISBN 9-004-04487-6; 10-ISBN 9-004-10278-7; 13-ISBN 978-9-004-10278-1 (cloth) [reprinted by University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1999. 10-ISBN 0-824-82212-9; 13-ISBN 978-0-824-82212-5 (paper)

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