Ryūsaku Tsunoda facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Ryūsaku Tsunoda
角田 柳作
Ryūsaku Tsunoda in his Columbia University classroom
Born	(1877-09-08)September 8, 1877 Gunma prefecture, Japan
Died	November 29, 1964(1964-11-29) (aged 87) Honolulu, Hawaii, United States
Occupation	Japanese studies

Ryūsaku Tsunoda (角田 柳作, Tsunoda Ryūsaku, 8 September 1877 - 29 November 1964) was a Japan academic and Japanologist. He is known as the "father of Japanese studies" at Columbia University.

Career

Tsunoda was responsible for the early growth of the Japanese language and literature collection at Columbia's library.

Tsunoda's best known students was Donald Keene. Keene's opinion of Tsunoda was explaind in a lecture given at Waseda University in 1994:

"His vocation was teaching, not writing. His joy as a teacher lay in communicating knowledge directly and enthusiastically to his students.... "

According to Sir George Sansom, Tsunoda was the "father of Japanese studies in America".

In an overview of writings by and about Tsunoda, OCLC/WorldCat lists roughly 50 works in 100+2 publications in 4 languages and 2,000+ library holdings.