Serge Elisséeff
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Serge Elisséeff (; born Sergei Grigorievich Eliseyev; 13 January 188913 April 1975) was a Russian-French scholar, Japanologist, and professor at Harvard University. He was one of the first Westerners to study Japanese at a university in Japan. He began studying Japanese at the
University of Berlin The Humboldt University of Berlin (, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin, Germany. The university was established by Frederick William III on the initiative of Wilhelm von Humbol ...
, then transferred to Tokyo Imperial University (today's
University of Tokyo The University of Tokyo (, abbreviated as in Japanese and UTokyo in English) is a public research university in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Founded in 1877 as the nation's first modern university by the merger of several pre-westernisation era ins ...
) in 1912,Zurndorfer, Harriet Thelma. (1995)
''China Bibliography: A Research Guide to Reference Works About China Past and Present,'' p. 31.
/ref> becoming the first Westerner to graduate from Tokyo Imperial University in Japanese as well as its first Western graduate student. Elisséeff served in 1916 as Privat-Dozent at Petrograd Imperial University (modern
Saint Petersburg State University Saint Petersburg State University (SPBGU; ) is a public research university in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in Russia. Founded in 1724 by a decree of Peter the Great, the university from the be ...
), and in 1917 as Professor in the Institute for the History of Foreign Affairs in
Petrograd Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city had a population of 5,601, ...
. "Serge Elisseeff Chosen to be Harvard Professor,"
''
The Harvard Crimson ''The Harvard Crimson'' is the student newspaper at Harvard University, an Ivy League university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. The newspaper was founded in 1873, and is run entirely by Harvard College undergraduate students. His ...
.'' January 26, 1934.
In the 1930s he became a professor of Far Eastern Languages at Harvard, where he became the first director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute and founded the ''
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies The ''Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies'' (HJAS) is an English-language scholarly journal published by the Harvard-Yenching Institute. ''HJAS'' features articles and book reviews of current scholarship in East Asian studies, East Asian Studies, fo ...
''. Fluent in eight languages, including Chinese and Japanese, Elisséeff was one of the foremost Japanologists of his time, both in the West and in Japan. The American Japanologist Edwin O. Reischauer, who was one of Elisséeff's students, wrote that "perhaps no one better deserves the title of Father of Far Eastern Studies in the United States." He had close personal ties to many of the greatest Japanese literary names of the early 20th century and wrote occasional articles for the ''
Asahi Shimbun is a Japanese daily newspaper founded in 1879. It is one of the oldest newspapers in Japan and Asia, and is considered a newspaper of record for Japan. The ''Asahi Shimbun'' is one of the five largest newspapers in Japan along with the ''Yom ...
''.


Life and career


Early life

Serge Elisséeff was born "Sergei Grigorievich Eliseyev" (
Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...
: ) on 13 January 1889 in St. Petersburg. Elisséeff's great-grandfather Pyotr Eliseyev (1775–1825) was born a serf in bondage to the Sheremetev family but started a wine and fruit import business that with subsequent generations became a large economic empire including the St. Petersburg Private Commercial Bank (first joint-stock bank in the Russian Empire), the Russian Bank for Foreign Trade and the Russian Lloyd's insurance company among others. Elisséeff's father, Grigori Eliseyev (1858–1949), inherited the family business, and was one of the builders of the Eliseyev Emporium in St. Petersburg. Due to the great wealth of Elisséeff's family, his parents spared no expense in educating him and his brothers. When Elisséeff was six years old, he began regular lessons in German with his mother's private secretary. His parents also had a custom of only speaking French at their dinner table in order to prevent their butlers and servants from eavesdropping on their conversations, a practice that was augmented by the boys' French private tutor. In 1899, at age 10, Elisséeff began attending Larinsky College, a '' gymnasium'' in St. Petersburg, where he received a traditional education in the Latin and Greek Classics. When he was 11, his parents added private English tutoring to his education, so that by his teenage years Elisséeff was already fluent in French, German, English, Latin, and Ancient Greek, in addition to his native Russian. As a youth, Elisséeff initially desired to pursue a career in oil painting, but was convinced by his
Russian literature Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia, its Russian diaspora, émigrés, and to Russian language, Russian-language literature. Major contributors to Russian literature, as well as English for instance, are authors of different e ...
teacher that his wealthy background would prevent him from "knowing the suffering that any creative art requires", and that he should become a scholar of the
humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture, including Philosophy, certain fundamental questions asked by humans. During the Renaissance, the term "humanities" referred to the study of classical literature a ...
instead. His teacher arranged for Elisséeff to meet with Sergey Oldenburg, the secretary of the
Russian Academy of Sciences The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS; ''Rossíyskaya akadémiya naúk'') consists of the national academy of Russia; a network of scientific research institutes from across the Russian Federation; and additional scientific and social units such ...
and Russia's preeminent scholar of East Asia. Elisséeff told Oldenburg that he wanted to begin studying Chinese, but Oldenburg advised him to focus on Japanese instead, as there were already a number of well-trained
Sinologists Sinology, also referred to as China studies, is a subfield of area studies or East Asian studies involved in social sciences and humanities research on China. It is an academic discipline that focuses on the study of the Chinese civilization ...
in Europe at that time but only one expert Japanologist – the British scholar Basil Hall Chamberlain. Oldenburg advised Elisséeff to enter the University of Berlin (modern
Humboldt University of Berlin The Humboldt University of Berlin (, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin, Germany. The university was established by Frederick William III on the initiative of Wilhelm von Humbol ...
) and begin studying Japanese and Chinese, and then to move to Japan for further study.


University study

Elisséeff began his university studies at the
University of Berlin The Humboldt University of Berlin (, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin, Germany. The university was established by Frederick William III on the initiative of Wilhelm von Humbol ...
in 1907, at age 18, in the ''Seminar für Orientalischen Sprachen'' (Seminar for Oriental Languages) led by German scholar
Eduard Sachau Carl Eduard Sachau (20 July 1845 – 17 September 1930) was a German orientalist. He taught Josef Horovitz and Eugen Mittwoch. Biography He studied oriental languages at the Universities of Kiel and Leipzig, obtaining his PhD at Halle in 186 ...
. He studied Japanese language and history, and also began studying Chinese under German sinologists Wilhelm Grube and Otto Franke. In 1908, after one year at Berlin, Elisséeff transferred to Tokyo Imperial University (modern
University of Tokyo The University of Tokyo (, abbreviated as in Japanese and UTokyo in English) is a public research university in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Founded in 1877 as the nation's first modern university by the merger of several pre-westernisation era ins ...
), where, after some initial opposition, he became its first foreign student who had not come up through the Japanese "higher school" (''kōtō gakkō'' ) system. In addition to his normal courses, Elisséeff also took a heavy load of private tutoring to make up for his limited background in Japanese. He graduated in 1912, scoring an 82 (equivalent to modern "A−") on his final oral examination and writing a thesis on the ''
haiku is a type of short form poetry that originated in Japan. Traditional Japanese haiku consist of three phrases composed of 17 Mora (linguistics), morae (called ''On (Japanese prosody), on'' in Japanese) in a 5, 7, 5 pattern; that include a ''kire ...
'' of the famed Japanese poet Bashō entitled "''Bashō kenkyū no ippen'' " ("An Aspect of Bashō Studies"), and graduated near the top of his class. Elisséeff was allowed to stand with in the row of "A" students at their graduation ceremony, which was also the last public function attended by
Emperor Meiji , posthumously honored as , was the 122nd emperor of Japan according to the List of emperors of Japan, traditional order of succession, reigning from 1867 until his death in 1912. His reign is associated with the Meiji Restoration of 1868, which ...
. Notwithstanding his excellent academic performance, Elisséeff was still racially discriminated against as a foreigner. On the official list of 1912 graduates, Elisséeff's name was printed at the very bottom of the paper, separated from the rest of the students by a wide space, which implied that he graduated last in his class when he had actually been one of the top students. When Elisséeff confronted Haga Yaichi (; 1867–1927), the professor responsible for his low placement on the notice, Haga "simply explained to him that it was impossible to list a foreigner higher than any Japanese." Elisséeff had to make a special request to receive an invitation to join the Alumni Society (''Bungakushikai'' ) – normally automatically extended to all graduates – and his invitations to their meetings were commonly delivered the day after they had taken place, with the explanation that "the presence of a foreigner at these meetings would inhibit the discussion." In autumn 1912, Elisséeff returned to Tokyo Imperial as its first ever foreign graduate student. He studied Chinese and
Japanese painting is one of the oldest and most highly refined of the Japanese visual arts, encompassing a wide variety of genres and styles. As with the history of Japanese arts in general, the long history of Japanese painting exhibits synthesis and competiti ...
, Japanese history, and the drama of the late medieval Japanese poet Ihara Saikaku. Elisséeff was also interested in
Kabuki is a classical form of Theatre of Japan, Japanese theatre, mixing dramatic performance with Japanese traditional dance, traditional dance. Kabuki theatre is known for its heavily stylised performances, its glamorous, highly decorated costumes ...
theatre, and took private Kabuki dancing lessons in his spare time. In addition to Japanese, also began taking private lessons in
Mandarin Chinese Mandarin ( ; zh, s=, t=, p=Guānhuà, l=Mandarin (bureaucrat), officials' speech) is the largest branch of the Sinitic languages. Mandarin varieties are spoken by 70 percent of all Chinese speakers over a large geographical area that stretch ...
from a
Manchu The Manchus (; ) are a Tungusic peoples, Tungusic East Asian people, East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized Ethnic minorities in China, ethnic minority in China and the people from wh ...
tutor to improve his knowledge of Chinese. In early 1913, Elisséeff met and interviewed Keiki, the last
shōgun , officially , was the title of the military rulers of Japan during most of the period spanning from 1185 to 1868. Nominally appointed by the Emperor, shoguns were usually the de facto rulers of the country, except during parts of the Kamak ...
of the
Tokugawa shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. The Tokugawa shogunate was established by Tokugawa Ieyasu after victory at the Battle of Sekigahara, ending the civil wars ...
. Elisséeff's academic accomplishments as a foreigner made him "a kind of legend" in Japan and Japanese scholarship, and earned him connections with notable Japanese literary figures such as the renowned novelist
Natsume Sōseki , born , was a Japanese novelist. He is best known for his novels ''Kokoro'', ''Botchan'', ''I Am a Cat'', ''Kusamakura (novel), Kusamakura'' and his unfinished work ''Light and Darkness (novel), Light and Darkness''. He was also a scholar of Br ...
and author Kafū Nagai.


University of St. Petersburg

While a graduate student at Tokyo, Elisséeff met the German economist Heinrich Waentig, who read some of Elisséeff's scholarship and noted that while his linguistic and historical knowledge had become strong, his organizational and analytic skills were not up to Western standards, and advised him to return to Europe. He left Japan in the summer of 1914 and returned to St. Petersburg, where he presented himself as a Ph.D. candidate at the University of St. Petersburg. Elisséeff had to get governmental approval to have his University of Tokyo degree recognized as equivalent to those from European universities, and his acceptance as a Ph.D. candidate had to be personally approved by Tsar Nicholas II. Elisséeff was then appointed a ''privat-dozent'' in Japanese and an official interpreter for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was also elected an assistant professor at the private Institute of Art History, where he gave a course on the history of Chinese art that has been recognized as probably the first Chinese art history course in the West to be based primarily on original Chinese and Japanese texts and sources. He spent the next two summers in Japan working on a Ph.D. dissertation on Bashō, but was devastated upon returning to Russia in the fall of 1917: the chaos of the
Bolshevik Revolution The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of two revolutions in Russia in 1917. It was led by Vladimir L ...
had allowed the Bolsheviks to take over the banking system, in which the Elisséeff's family fortune was seized, and the manuscript of his nearly completed dissertation was confiscated from the diplomatic pouch in which he had mailed it home and burned.


Harvard and later career

Elisséeff spent the years from 1917 to 1920 in St. Petersburg attempting to continue his work, but his family was frequently harassed and searched because of their affluent background, and Elisséeff was constantly pressured to make his teaching conform to
Marxist Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...
ideology. Several of his relatives starved to death, and Elisséeff's family survived the winters by burning their furniture collections for warmth. In the summer of 1920, Elisséeff and his wife decided to flee Russia. They hid themselves and their two small sons, all malnourished and weakened, under the deck boards of a fishing boat that smuggled them across the
Gulf of Finland The Gulf of Finland (; ; ; ) is the easternmost arm of the Baltic Sea. It extends between Finland to the north and Estonia to the south, to Saint Petersburg—the second largest city of Russia—to the east, where the river Neva drains into it. ...
to freedom in Finland. They stayed in Finland for a month, then moved to
Stockholm Stockholm (; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, most populous city of Sweden, as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in the Nordic countries. Approximately ...
for several months before, like many other White Russian émigrés, settling in
Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
. From 1921 to 1929, Elisséeff was also the head interpreter at the Japanese Imperial Embassy in Paris, and formally obtained French citizenship in 1931. In 1932, Elisséeff came to the United States to serve as a lecturer in Japanese and Chinese at
Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...
. During the 1933–34 academic year, he returned to Paris to serve as Director of Studies at the
École Pratique des Hautes Études École or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * Éco ...
. He returned to the United States in 1934 when Harvard offered him a professorship in Far Eastern Languages. Elisséeff was the first director of the
Harvard–Yenching Institute The Harvard–Yenching Institute is an independent foundation dedicated to advancing higher education in Asia in the humanities and social sciences, with special attention to the study of Asian culture. It traditionally had close ties to Harvar ...
(HYI), an independent, non-profit organization founded in 1928 to further the spread of knowledge and scholarship on
East East is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fact that ea ...
and
Southeast Asia Southeast Asia is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, southeastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of China, east of the Indian subcontinent, and northwest of the Mainland Au ...
. HYI history web page
Under the auspices of the HYI, Elisséeff established the ''
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies The ''Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies'' (HJAS) is an English-language scholarly journal published by the Harvard-Yenching Institute. ''HJAS'' features articles and book reviews of current scholarship in East Asian studies, East Asian Studies, fo ...
'' in 1936. The journal publishes monograph-length scholarly articles focused on Asian humanities. His wide range of knowledge came to be reflected in the diverse character of the journal during the twenty-one years he served as its editor (1936–57). At some point in this tenure, he compared the effects of
McCarthyism McCarthyism is a political practice defined by the political repression and persecution of left-wing individuals and a Fear mongering, campaign spreading fear of communist and Soviet influence on American institutions and of Soviet espionage i ...
at Harvard to his experiences in Russia. Elisséeff resigned his position of director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute in 1956, then the following year accepted emeritus status from Harvard and returned to Paris to his professorship at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, then later retired. The prominent American Japanologist Edwin O. Reischauer, who was one of Elisséeff's students, wrote that "perhaps no one better deserves the title of Father of Far Eastern Studies in the United States." In 1973, Elisséeff became the first foreigner to receive the
Japan Foundation Award The Japan Foundation Awards honor individuals and organizations for significant contributions to "the enhancement of mutual understanding between Japan and other countries." History Activities in an academic or cultural field have been presented ...
. His wife, Vera, died in 1971, and Elisséeff himself died in Paris in 1975, aged 86.


Personal life

Elisséeff and his wife, Vera Petrovna (''née'' Eikhe) Elisséeff, were married in Russia on 22 November 1914 and had two sons: Nikita Elisséeff (1 August 1915 –25 November 1997), who became a scholar of the Middle East, and Vadime Elisséeff (4 May 1918 –29 January 2002), a noted historian and expert on East Asian art.


Honors

*
Japan Foundation The is a Japanese foundation that spreads Japanese culture around the world. Based in Tokyo, it was established in 1972 by an Act of the National Diet as a special legal entity to undertake international dissemination of Japanese culture. I ...
: Japan Foundation Award, 1973.


Selected works

In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about Serge Elisséeff,
OCLC OCLC, Inc. See also: is an American nonprofit cooperative organization "that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large". It was founded in 1967 as the ...
/
WorldCat WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the O ...
encompasses roughly 100+ works in 100+ publications in 10 languages and 1,500+ library holdings. WorldCat IdentitiesElisséeff, Serge 1889-1975
/ref> * ''La peinture contemporaine au Japon'' (1923) * ''Neuf nouvelles japonaises'' (1924) * ''Le théatre Japonais (kabuki)'' (1932), with Alexandre Iacovleff * ''Elementary Japanese for university students'' (1941) * ''Elementary Japanese for college students'' (1944) * ''Selected Japanese texts for university students'' (1944) * ''Japan : frühe buddhistische Malereien'' (1959)


References


Citations


Works cited

* * Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric and Käthe Roth. (2005)
''Japan encyclopedia.''
Cambridge:
Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is an academic publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University. It is a member of the Association of University Presses. Its director since 2017 is George Andreou. The pres ...
. ; * * Rogala, Joseph. (2001)
''A Collector's Guide to Books on Japan in English: A Select List of Over 2500 Titles.''
London:
Routledge Routledge ( ) is a British multinational corporation, multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, academic journals, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanit ...
. * West, Philip. (1976). ''Yenching University and Sino-Western Relations, 1916-1952.'' Cambridge:
Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is an academic publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University. It is a member of the Association of University Presses. Its director since 2017 is George Andreou. The pres ...
. * Zurndorfer, Harriet Thelma. (1995)
''China Bibliography: A Research Guide to Reference Works About China Past and Present.''
Leiden:
Brill Publishers Brill Academic Publishers () is a Dutch international academic publisher of books, academic journals, and Bibliographic database, databases founded in 1683, making it one of the oldest publishing houses in the Netherlands. Founded in the South ...
.ISBN 978-90-04-10278- 1 eprinted by University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1999. (paper)


External links


''Japan: Ancient Buddhist Paintings''
(1959), with Takaaki Matsushita. * {{DEFAULTSORT:Elisseeff, Serge French Japanologists French sinologists Russian sinologists University of Tokyo alumni Humboldt University of Berlin alumni Academic staff of the University of Paris Harvard University faculty 1889 births Academics from Saint Petersburg 1972 deaths French male non-fiction writers 20th-century French translators 20th-century French male writers