HANE, Mikiso 1922-2003

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born January 16, 1922, in Hollister, CA; died December 8, 2003, in Peoria, IL. Historian, educator, and author. Hane, a professor emeritus at Knox College, was a highly respected authority on modern Japanese history. He was born in the United States to Japanese immigrant parents; from the time he was ten until he was eighteen he lived in and was educated in Japan. He returned to America just before World War II, only to find himself interned in a government camp in Arizona because of his Japanese ancestry. Released in 1943, he taught Japanese at Yale University. While teaching and working for an Asian studies journal, Hane completed his education at Yale, earning a B.A. in 1952, an M.A. in 1953, and a Ph.D. in 1957. He then taught history at the University of Toledo for two years before joining the Knox College faculty in 1961 as an assistant professor. Hane became a full professor at Knox in 1972 and was named Szold Distinguished Service Professor of History in 1975. Although he retired in 1992, Hane continued teaching at Knox until just a month before his death. During his career, Hane taught not only Japanese history, but also the history of China, Russia, and India. As an author, he was most often praised for his studies of the lives of women and the underclass in Japan before World War II, for which work he conducted numerous interviews to collect an oral history. Among his published works are Cultures in Transition (1973), Peasants, Rebels and Outcasts: The Underside of Modern Japan (1982), Premodern Japan: A Historical Survey (1991; revised as Modern Japan: A Historical Survey, (1986), The Age of Hirohito (1995), and Japan: A Short Cultural History (2000); he also translated Masao Maruyama's Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan (1974) and translated and edited Reflections on the Way to the Gallows: Rebel Women in Prewar Japan (1988). In recognition of Hane's contributions to history and the understanding of Japanese culture and society, the Mikiso Hane East Asian Studies Prize was named in his honor by Knox College in 1992, and in 2003 the Mikiso Hane Undergraduate Research Prize in Asian Studies was created by the Midwest conference of Asian Studies. In 1991, furthermore, Hane was named to the National Council on the Humanities by President George H. Bush.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

BOOKS

Directory of American Scholars, 10th edition, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2001.

ONLINE

Knox College,http://www.knox.edu/ (December 10, 2003).

The Paper,http://www.the-paper.net/ (January 6, 2004).