Asakawa Kan'ichi: Marries Miriam Dingwall, 1905

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Fig. Miriam Dingwall. This is a schematic picture. Interested reader can visit Fukushima Prefecture website at

https://www.library.fcs.ed.jp/?page_id=261 p.3 top left

(permission by the library)

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.

Asakawa met Miriam Dingwall in 1899 when he was a doctoral student at Yale. They got married on October 12, 1905, at a church in Crown Point, Essex County, New York.

According to contemporary reports, they were a happy couple, but Miriam passed away on February 4, 1913. Since then, Asakawa did not remarry and remained unmarried. The couple did not have any children.

The greatest regret in Asakawa’s life was the death of his wife, and in a letter that Asakawa sent to one of his friends Clark at the beginning of 1948, he repeatedly read the part of the diary where he wrote about his wife Miriam’s death after his retirement as a professor. 

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