John Curtis Perry

John Curtis Perry
Born	(1930-07-18) July 18, 1930 Orange, New Jersey[1]
Other names	ペリー, ジョン・カーティス[2]
Residence	Ipswich, Massachusetts
Citizenship	United States
Fields	East Asian studies, Maritime studies
Institutions	Carleton College Connecticut College The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy
Alma mater	Yale University (A.B.) Yale University (M.A.) Harvard University (Ph.D.)
Thesis	Great Britain and the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1858-1905 (1962)
Doctoral advisor	Edwin O. Reischauer Robert G. Albion[3]
Other academic advisors	George Vernadsky
Doctoral students	Sung-Yoon Lee
Notable awards	Imperial decoration of the Order of the Sacred Treasure
Spouse	Sarah Hollis French
Children	5[1]

John Curtis Perry also known as John Perry (born 18 July 1930)^[1] is an East Asian and Oceanic studies professor. He is the Henry Willard Denison Professor of History at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.^[4][5] He is also the Director of that school's Maritime Studies program^[6] and president of the Institute for Global Maritime Studies.^[7]

Perry has written several history books and articles, on topics such as Pacific Asia-US relations, the American occupation of Japan, and American expansionism toward the Pacific Ocean. He has received critical acclaim for his artful writing, conveying history to the reader with pith, wit, and clarity.

Education

Perry attended Friends schools in Washington, DC and New York City, subsequently going to Yale College for his bachelor's degree in Chinese Studies, graduating in 1952. At Yale he also pursued a master of arts in Foreign Area Studies.^[7][8]

Perry was an intelligence officer in the United States Navy for three years, approximately between 1952 and 1956.^[8] He served as an assistant Naval Attaché during 1954 and 1955 at the US Embassy in Tokyo.^[9]

Later, he attended Harvard University for his PhD in history, concluding in 1962 with his thesis Great Britain and the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1858-1905. His doctoral advisors were Edwin O. Reischauer, a japanologist, and Robert G. Albion, a maritime historian.^[3][7]

Career

From 1962 until 1966, Perry was Assistant Professor of History at Connecticut College, and from 1966 to 1980, he was Assistant Professor, Professor of History, and Director of the East Asian Studies Program at Carleton College.^[10][11] In 1980, he joined the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy,^[4] becoming the Henry Willard Denison Chair of History in 1981.^[7]

Perry was a visiting research associate at Harvard's Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies from 1976 to 1979, and at the Japan Institute (later renamed Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies) from 1979 to 1980.^[1]

In his early career, his teaching and research focus was American-East Asian relations, especially with Japan. In the early 2000s, he shifted his focus to maritime studies in order to explore the history of human interactions via the sea.^[12] From 1985 to 1997, he was the director of the North Pacific Program,^[1][7] and is currently the director of the Maritime Studies program.^[4] He teaches Maritime History and Globalization and The International Relations of the China Seas.^[13]

Perry is the president of the Institute for Global Maritime Studies, a non-profit research organization. He has been a consultant to several organizations, including the Policy Planning Branch of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Korea,^[4] the Japan Export Trade Promotion Organization (currently the Japan External Trade Organization, JETRO), and Rhumb Line LLC.^[7] He also served as a director of the Japan America Society of New Hampshire.^[4] He is a senior advisor and director of the Japan Society of Boston.^[14]

Family

In 1957, Perry married Sarah Hollis French, of Farmington, Connecticut. They have five children and ten grandchildren.^[1][8][12]

Sarah Hollis is an alumna of Miss Porter's School and the 1956 class of Smith College. She is daughter of Hollis S. French and Mary Norris French from Farmington and Annisquam, Massachusetts. Her parents were heads of Miss Porter's School from 1954 to 1966. She is granddaughter to Mr. and Mrs. John D. Frick of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and great-granddaughter to Robert Packer Linderman, who was president of the Bethlehem Steel company She is great-great-granddaughter to Judge Asa Packer, founder of Lehigh University, and of Robert H. Sayre, builder of the Lehigh Valley Railroad.^[8] Sarah Hollis has worked as the assistant to the director of the Rowland Institute for Science in Cambridge, Massachusetts.^[15]

Honors

Ribbon

Medal

Order of the Sacred Treasure, Third Class

In 1991, the Japanese Government awarded Perry the imperial decoration of the Order of the Sacred Treasure, Third Class (Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon), for his contributions to American-Japanese relations.^[2][7][12]

In 2000, Fletcher students and friends established the John Curtis Perry Fellowship for a deserving Fletcher student.^[12][16][17]

Notable writings

Perry has been praised for his skillful, pithy, and enjoyable style of writing to convey history to the reader.^[18][19] Historian Roger Dingman has said that "Perry writes clearly, succinctly and wittily".^[20] Raymond A. Esthus compares Perry's style to "sumi-e, the Japanese paintings that portray a scene or suggest a world of feeling with a few skillful brush strokes".^[21] Clayton James said of Beneath the Eagle's Wings: Americans in Occupied Japan "It is a model for brevity, lucidity, coherence, balance, objectivity, and perceptiveness".^[22] Walter McDougall writes of Perry, "He has a keen eye for [literary] images"^[23] and Roger Dingman commented, "He has an eye for the pithy quote and the illustrative incident".^[20]

The American occupation of Japan

In the book Beneath the Eagle's Wings: Americans in Occupied Japan (1980), Perry asserted that the post-WWII American occupation of Japan was a major success, despite the odds. Americans came into Japan full of vitality and energy, convinced of the superiority of their own culture and its suitability for Japan, and unencumbered by much knowledge of Japan's history or culture. These American characteristics might have been reasons for failure, but paradoxically the occupation was an extraordinary success: "a landmark in human history," Perry states.

However, despite how little Americans knew of the Japanese, the occupation policy actually did not clash head-on with Japanese ways of doing things. The nation was ruled through the Japanese government, making local military government units superfluous. The technique most widely used by occupation officials was hortatory: advice, counsel, and visits by experts invited to Japan by the supreme commander of the allied powers. This worked because of the extreme deference shown to the occupiers by the Japanese people and their leaders. Yet, although the occupation did remake the social, political and economic structures of Japan, its culture displayed a great degree of resilience.^[21] His stress is on the fascinating ways in which the occupiers and the occupied adjusted and adapted to their unprecedented encounter and, thanks to good will on both sides, made the Occupation's liabilities as insignificant as possible.^[22]

Esthus characterized the book as a "fine interpretive portrait of the American experience in occupied Japan",^[21] and Clayton James called it a "first rate" account on the occupation of Japan, "demonstrating masterful knowledge of the period and its literature," making it "a delightful brief study that both general readers and teachers in the field will appreciate."^[22] On the other hand, Dingman was critical of the work, pointing to a lack of research and sources and the "painting" of a "rosy view of the American occupation", while he still positively evaluated Perry's literary skills.^[20]

History of US-East Asia relations

The book Sentimental Imperialists: The American Experience in East Asia (1981, co-authored with James Thomson and Peter W. Stanley) was welcomed by Kenneth Shewmaker as "a masterpiece of condensation and multicultural analysis," and went on to say "In their thoughtful overview the authors discern four major underlying patterns: competitive nationalism, mutual ethnocentrism, multilateral ignorance, and a distinctive American sense of mission to 'do good' that has been the driving force behind American imperialism in East Asia". The authors "effectively combined their expertise to fashion an impressive multicultural study that cogently encapsulates two hundred years of American-East Asian relations".^[24] Cohen also evaluated the book positively, deeming some of its chapters "superb," "well-written, thoughtful, and informative",^[25] and Van Alstyne said he was inclined to "second the praise lavished upon it by a number of prominent writers quoted on the dust jacket."^[26]

American pioneering in the Pacific Ocean

In Facing West: Americans and the Opening of the Pacific (1995), Perry explored the attempts and successes by individuals in connecting the North Pacific with sail, steam, and aviation. He stated that the book is "concerned with people, not policy. The United States had no policy for bridging the Pacific [before WWII]."^[23] Furthermore, he mostly avoided referring to wars and geopolitical struggles, and rather focused on the vision, entrepreneurship, and courage of Americans who strove to bridge the Pacific.^[23] "American activity was largely private, not governmental; individual and not collective; sporadic, not systematic", Perry said,^[19] and Americans were propelled by the lure of profitable commerce and a sense of destiny to be the dominant force in the Pacific.^[19] Perry concluded that, "although Americans failed to grasp the Orient as they hoped, the power of the myth that pushed them there enabled them to do something bigger, something real. More than any other people, Americans pulled the North Pacific region together and created the essential framework for the long-anticipated Pacific era".^[23]

List of publications

Books

• The Flight of the Romanovs: A Family Saga, co-authored with Constantine Pleshakov (Basic Books, 1999) ISBN 978-0465024636
• Facing West: Americans and the Opening of the Pacific (Praeger, 1995) ISBN 978-0275949655
  • Published in Japanese as "Nishi E!" 西へ！　アメリカ人の太平洋開拓史 (PHP研究所, 1998)^[12]
• Sentimental Imperialists: The American Experience in East Asia, co-authored with James Thomson and Peter W. Stanley (Harper & Row, 1981) ISBN 978-0060142827
• Beneath the Eagle's Wings: Americans in Occupied Japan (Dodd Mead & Company, 1980) ISBN 978-0396078760
• Essays on T'ang society: the interplay of social, political and economic forces, co-edited with Bardwell L. Smith (The Journal of Asian Studies, 1976) ISBN 978-9004047617

Monographs

• America's Deep Blue Highway: How Coastal Shipping Could Reduce Traffic Congestion, Lower Pollution, and Bolster National Security co-authored with Scott Borgeson and Rockford Weitz (Institute for Global Maritime Studies, 2008)

Articles

• Beyond the Terracentric: Maritime Ruminations (The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, 2013)
• Oceanic Revolution and Pacific Asia (Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, 2011)
• Imperial China and the Sea, chapter in Asia looks seaward: power and maritime strategy, edited by Toshi Yoshihara and James R. Holmes (Praeger, 2007)
• Great Britain and the Emergence of Japan as a Naval Power (Monumenta Nipponica, 1996)
• Private philanthropy and foreign affairs: the case of John D. Rockefeller 3rd and Japan (Asian perspective, The Institute For Far Eastern Studies, vol. 8, no. 2, 1984)
• The Battle off the Tayang, 17 September 1894 (The Mariner's Mirror, Taylor & Francis, Volume 50, Issue 4, 1964)

Short essays

• Open a new highway - on the sea, co-authored with Rockford Weitz and Scott Borgerson (The Christian Science Monitor, Dec 23, 2007)
• The Deep Blue Highway, co-authored with Rockford Weitz and Scott Borgerson (The New York Times, Jan 2, 2007)
• Navigating the Swirling Currents of Change, co-authored with Rockford Weitz and Scott Borgerson (The Straits Times, Singapore, July 10, 2006)
• Russia as the great Asian power (Moscow News, February 4, 1994)
• Dateline North Korea: A Communist Holdout (Foreign Policy, 1990)
• Modern Japan's lagging "frontier" (The Christian Science Monitor, May 22, 1985)
• Asia's Telectronic Highway (Foreign Policy, 1985)
• Please, Japan, Return The Favor: Occupy Us (The New York Times, March 4, 1981)

References

External links

• Institute for Global Maritime Studies
• Works by or about John Curtis Perry in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Video: "Ruminations on Oceanic Revolution: A Saltwater Perspective on Modern History" lecture at S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies