John Whitney Hall

John Whitney Hall (September 13, 1916 – October 21, 1997), the Tokyo-born son of missionaries in Japan, grew up to become a pioneer in the field of Japanese studies and one of the most respected historians of Japan of his generation. His life work was recognized by the Japanese government. At the time he was honored with Japan's Order of the Sacred Treasure, he was one of only a very small number of Americans to have been singled out in this way.

John Whitney Hall became an authority on pre-modern Japan; and he helped transform the way Western scholars view the period immediately preceding Japan's modernization as well as the thousand years before that. Professor Jeffrey Mass, a one-time student and later colleague of Hall's on the Yale faculty, described him as a quiet, self-contained man—and a master punster. Hall was a great admirer of Japanese culture and he amassed a large collection of prints, folk art and pottery; but in addition to being a dedicated academic, he was also an experienced mountain climber who had climbed extensively in the Japanese Alps.

The only son of Congregational missionaries, Professor Hall was born in Kyoto in 1916 and lived in Japan until he was a teenager. According to his wife Robin, he visited the United States with his parents as a child and he had been appalled by how little Americans knew about Japan. After her husband's death, Mrs. Hall explained, "Being brought up in Japan and by missionaries, he was a very straight-arrow kind of person. There is this kind of missionary feeling, that you must make something of this [life], not just throw it away."

He prepared for college by attending Phillips Andover Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. At Amherst College, he majored in American studies, comparing the United States to Japan. After receiving a A.B. degree in 1939, he returned to Japan an instructor in English at Doshisha University in Kyoto until 1941.

During the war, he served with United States Naval Intelligence, leaving the service with the rank of Lieutenant Commander.

Hall earned his Ph.D. in East Asian languages and literatures from Harvard University in 1950. At Harvard, he became one of the first graduate students to study under Edwin O. Reischauer, who was another missionary's son and a pioneering Japan scholar.

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