Reischauer, Edwin O(ldfather) (1910-1990)

US diplomat and scholar. He served with great skill as US ambassador to Japan at a difficult time (1961-66), when Japan criticized escalating US military involvement in Vietnam. He returned to Harvard, joining the foreign policy debate as an opponent of the Vietnam War and an early advocate of restoring diplomatic relations with communist China.

Born in Tokyo, Japan, the son of a US missionary, he was raised in Japan and earned a BA at Oberlin College and a PhD at Harvard. An expert on Japanese language, culture, and politics, he taught at Harvard 1938-81. He and his colleague, John K Fairbank, established themselves as the country's preeminent East Asia experts, collaborating on two classic textbooks, East Asia: The Great Tradition 1960 and East Asia: The Modern Transformation 1965. His other books include The Japanese Today 1988, the final revision of his classic study.