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Delmer Myers Brown (November 20, 1909November 9, 2011) was an American academic,
historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...
, writer, translator and Japanologist. He was a professor of Japanese history at the
University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of Californi ...
.


Early life, education, and personal life

Brown was born on November 20, 1909 in Harrisonville, Missouri and grew up in
Kansas City, Missouri Kansas City (abbreviated KC or KCMO) is the largest city in Missouri by population and area. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the city had a population of 508,090 in 2020, making it the List of United States cities by populat ...
. In 1925, he moved with his family to
Santa Ana, California Santa Ana () is the second most populous city and the county seat of Orange County, California. Located in the Greater Los Angeles region of Southern California, the city's population was 310,227 at the 2020 census, making Santa Ana the 13th-m ...
. He attended
Santa Ana Junior College Santa Ana College is a public community college in Santa Ana, California. History In 1915, Santa Ana Junior College opened its doors to 25 students as a department of Santa Ana High School. It was the second community college founded in Orange ...
and then
Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...
, where he graduated with a degree in history in 1932. Instead of going to law school, as originally planned, Brown took a position teaching English at a prestigious Japanese Imperial "Higher School" in Kanazawa, Ishikawa,
Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...
. It was there that he met and married Mary Nelson Logan in 1934. During
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
, Brown served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy. Brown earned his Ph.D. in Japanese history from Stanford in 1946. "Dr. Delmer Brown Receives Medal from Japanese Government,"
''Nichibei News'', April 29, 1997; retrieved 2013-08-22.
In 1987, Mary died after 53 years of marriage. Brown was widowed twice more; by Margaret Young Brown in 2003 and Louise K. Weamer in 2010. He is survived by his companion Pauline Howland, two sisters, a son and three step-children, two granddaughters, and six great-grandchildren. Brown died on November 9, 2011 following a
stroke A stroke is a disease, medical condition in which poor cerebral circulation, blood flow to the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: brain ischemia, ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and intracranial hemorrhage, hemorr ...
.


Career

From 1946 to 1977, Brown was a member of the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley. He was chairman of the history department from 1957 to 1961 and 1971 to 1975. Brown was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in Japan from 1959 to 1960. In 1998, Brown started the process of establishing the Japanese Historical Text Initiative (JHTI), which is a searchable online database of Japanese historical documents and English translations. It is part of the Center for Japanese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. The development of JHTI involved negotiations with the
University of Tokyo Press The is a university press affiliated with the University of Tokyo in Japan. It was founded in 1951, following the post-World War II reorganization of the university. Honors * Japan Foundation: Special Prize, 1990. Location The headquarters o ...
and Japan's National Institute of Japanese Literature.


Selected works

In an overview of writings by and about Brown, OCLC/ WorldCat lists roughly 40+ works in 80+ publications in 4 languages and 1,500+ library holdings. * ''Nationalism in Japan: An Introductory Historical Analysis,'' 1955 * ''Japan,'' 1967 * ''The future and the Past: A Translation and Study of the Gukanshō, an Interpretative History of Japan Written in 1219 by Jien,'' 1979 * ''Chronology of Japan'' = 日本の歴史, 1987 * ''An Introduction to Advanced Spoken Japanese,'' 1987 * ''The Cambridge History of Japan,'' Vol. 1, ''Ancient Japan ,'' 1993


Honors

* Order of the Sacred Treasure, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon (Japan)"Delmer Brown honored" at HNet.com
retrieved 2012-08-22.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brown, Delmer 1909 births 2011 deaths People from Harrisonville, Missouri Historians from Missouri American Japanologists American centenarians Men centenarians University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty Recipients of the Order of the Sacred Treasure Historians from California