Sir George Sansom—An Appreciation

Extract

Sir George Bailey Sansom, who died on March 8 in Tucson, Arizona, at the age of 82, was the last of the great amateurs and first among professional students of Japan in the Western world. Like Aston, Satow and Eliot, earlier pioneers of Japanese studies, he began his studies of Japan during his tenure in diplomatic posts. The long exposure and intimate knowledge of Japanese life that he received in the British Embassy in Tokyo between 1905 and 1940 provided a setting very different from contemporary academic arrangements whereby stays in Japan are reliefs from, and not the center of, professional life and activities.