HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES

Two Students Win Prizes in Japanese Scholarship

Gathered at the Reischauer/Kodansha symposium are (from left) Andrew Gordon, professor of history, and director of the Reischauer Institute; Yukio Itoh, U.S. representative of the Japan Forum, John Michael Rogers, graduate prize recipient; Tadayuki Tashiro, vice president of Kodashna Ltd. Publishers of Tokyo, Japan; and Akira Iriye, Charles Warren Professor of American History and keynote speaker at the symposium. (Sarah Kemble, the undergraduate prize winner, is not pictured.) Photo by Lisa Cohen.

Two students were named winners of the Noma-Reischauer Prize last month for the best Harvard graduate and undergraduate essays in Japanese studies. The prizes were awarded at the Edwin O. Reischauer/Kodansha Commemorative Symposium held last month.

John Michael Rogers (Ph.D., Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations) received the $3,000 prize in the graduate category for his essay "Paper Cannons and Frightful Noises: The Fall of the Tokugawa Military Profession." He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Reischauer Institute.

Sarah Kemble (B.A., 1998, in East Asian Studies) received the $2,000 prize in the undergraduate category for her essay, "The Role of Conciliation and the Conciliator in Japanese Civil Disputes: Defining the Relationship Between Law and Morality in a Legalized Society."

Each prize winner also received a copy of Japan: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, donated by the Japan Forum foundation of Tokyo, and presented by Yukio Itoh, its U.S. representative.

Presenting the awards was Tadayuki Tashiro, vice president of Kondansha Ltd. Publishers.

Akira Iriye, Charles Warren Professor of American History, was the keynote speaker at the symposium, which was held at the Reischauer House in Belmont. The Noma-Reischauer awards in Japanese Studies were established by Kodansha Ltd. Publishers in 1995 to honor the memory of the late Edwin O. Reischauer, University Professor Emeritus whose teaching career at Harvard began in 1938.