Asakawa Kan'ichi: The 1945 Letter From Langdon Warner To Him

 Langdon Warner (1881–1955) was an American archaeologist and art historian specializing in East Asian art. He was a professor at Harvard and the Curator of Oriental Art at Harvard's Fogg Museum. He and Asakawa prepared a draft of a letter from President Roosevelt to the Emperor not to go for a war even though the letter didn’t work.

Fig. Langdon Warner 

Image Number: 18560, Accession Number: 1973.30

 Artist: Arthur Pope

 Title: Langdon Warner (1881-1955), Date: 1951

 Credit Line: Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum,

Gift of Arthur Pope, Copyright: © Arthur Pope

 Photo Credit: © President and Fellows of Harvard College

 Citation: Arthur Pope, Langdon Warner (1881-1955), Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum,

 Gift of Arthur Pope, © Arthur Pope, Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College, 1973.30

Fig. Asakawa Kan’ichi

"Kan'ichi Asakawa Papers (MS 40). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library."

https://japanesehistory.yale.edu/about

Asakawa Kan’ichi (1873 –1948) was a Professor of History at Yale, a peace advocate, and a curator at the Yale Library. Born in Japan as the son of a samurai, he spent the majority of his life in America.

On August 22, 1945, a week after Japan’s defeat, Warner wrote a letter to Asakawa [1] (color emphasis by the author):

In response, Asakawa wrote a long letter to Warner [2]:

 

However, he says (color emphasis by the author):

If I was Asakawa, I would have been shocked by Warner’s description “What about active hate?” This could have triggered Asakawa to write his desperate rescue scheme of the devastated Japan. I will describe his rescue plan in another blog.

[1] Warner, L., “Letters Written by Dr. Kanichi Asakawa”, Waseda University Press, Tokyo, 1990.

[2] Yamaoka, M., Masui, Y., Igarashi, T., Yamauchi, H., Sato, Y., “Asakawa Kan’ichi Shiryo, Letter to Langdon Warner”, Waseda University, Asia- Pacific Research Institute, Tokyo, 2015, pp. 307-308.