EDWIN OLDFATHER REISCHAUER was United States ambassador to Japan from 1961 to 1966. In 1984, when the Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies was dedicated at SAIS, its director, George Packard, called Dr. Reischauer “quite simply the preeminent scholar, diplomat, and statesman of our time.” An East Asia scholar, he died in 1990 at the age of 80.
SOHEI NAKAYAMA, former chairman of the board of the Industrial Bank of Japan and founding chairman of the International University of Japan, took the lead in establishing this professorship. Mr. Nakayama received an honorary degree from Johns Hopkins in 1988. He died in 2005 at the age of 99.
Held by Kent E. Calder
KENT E. CALDER, the Edwin O. Reischauer Professor in East Asian Studies, director of the Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies, Director of Japan Studies and Acting Director of Korea Studies, joined SAIS in 2003. The first executive director of Harvard University’s Program on U.S. Japan Relations, he earlier earned a PhD in government there under the direction of Edwin O. Reischauer. Before joining SAIS, he also taught for 20 years at Princeton University, and served as Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Dr. Calder was named as special advisor to U.S. Ambassador to Japan Walter Mondale, and served under his successors Thomas Foley and Howard Baker. Calder is the author of five books on East Asian politics and security issues, the most recent of which, Pacific Defense: Arms, Energy, and America’s Future in Asia, won the 1997 Mainichi Grand Prix in Asia-Pacific Studies for its analysis of how economic change is transforming the U.S.-East Asia security equation. It was the first publication by an American to receive that award. In 2014, he was awarded the prestigious Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon by the Japanese Government in recognition of his significant contributions to the development of Japan studies in the United States and the enhancement of mutual understanding between the two countries.