Serge Elisséeff

Sergei Grigorievich Elisséeff (January 13, 1889–April 13, 1975) was a Franco-Russian-American academic, an early Sinologist and Japanologist.^[1] 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.^[2]

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.^[3] Many years later, his émigrée memories of chaos and fear during the Russian Revolution were stirred by the effects of pernicious McCarthyism at Harvard.^[4]

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.^[3]

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.^[5]

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.^[6]

Under the auspices of the HYI, Elisséeff established the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies (HJAS) in 1936. The journal publishes monograph-length scholarly articles focused on Asian humanities.^[6] 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).

Sorbonne

Elisséeff became a Professor of Japanese language at the Sorbonne in Paris between 1917 and 1930.^[3]

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.

Action during World War II

Elisséeff has played an important role during World War II. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941, the internment of Japanese and Japanese Americans in the United States made it difficult to find interpreters. Serge Elisseeff organized an accelerated training in Japanese language at Harvard.

On June 1st, 1945, proposals were made to President Harry Truman, Roosevelt's successor, to use a nuclear bomb against Japan as soon as possible, without warning. Kyōto was among a group of five proposed targets. ^[7] Elisséeff, who had gained a reputation since a 1941 visit to the White House, highlighted the cultural richness of the city and said that this destruction would be a serious obstacle to a subsequent reconciliation with Japan. Although some credited Elisséeff with saving the city, Edwin O. Reischauer, one of Elisséeff's students, gave a different explanation: "As has been amply proved by my friend Otis Cary of Doshisha in Kyoto, the only person deserving credit for preserving Kyoto from destruction is Henry L. Stimson, the Secretary of War at the time, who had known and admired Kyoto ever since his honeymoon there several decades earlier."^[8]

Honors

• Japan Foundation: Japan Foundation Award, 1973.^[9]

Selected works

In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about Serge Elisséeff, OCLC/WorldCat encompasses roughly 100+ works in 100+ publications in 10 languages and 1,500+ library holdings.^[10]

• La peinture contemporaine au Japon (1923)
• Neuf nouvelles japonaises (1924)
• Le théatre Japonais (kabuki) (1932), with Alexandre Iacovleff
• Elementary Japanese for university students (1941)
• Elementary Japanese for college students (1944)
• Selected Japanese texts for university students (1944)
• Japan : frühe buddhistische Malereien (1959)

Notes

References

• Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric and Käthe Roth. (2005). Japan encyclopedia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 10-ISBN 0-674-01753-6; 13-ISBN 978-0-674-01753-5; OCLC 58053128
• 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 90-04-04487-6; 10-ISBN 90-04-10278-7; 13-ISBN 978-90-04-10278-1 (cloth) [reprinted by University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1999. 10-ISBN 0-8248-2212-9; 13-ISBN 978-0-8248-2212-5 (paper)

External links

• Japan: Ancient Buddhist Paintings (1959), with Takaaki Matsushita.