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H-Japan
November 7, 2009
From: easc@college.usc.edu
We would like to inform you that the Government of Japan has just
announced the recipients of its Fall 2009 Decorations and Professor
Emeritus Gordon Berger, a former Director of the University of Southern
California East Asian Studies Center, is going to receive "The Order of
the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon." Please see the announcement
on the Japanese Consulate's website at http://www.la.us.emb-japan.go.jp.
Dr. Gordon Berger of USC awarded Japan's medal
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dr. Gordon Berger, professor emeritus of history at the University of
Southern California, is included in the recipient list of Japan' Fall 2009
Decoration.
The conferment ceremony for Dr. Berger will be held in Los Angeles in
November. He will receive The Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck
Ribbon.
The following is the full text of the government announcement about the
merits of Dr. Berger:
Dr. Gordon M. Berger was born in New London, Connecticut, and spent most
of his youth in New Jersey. He went to Wesleyan University (Connecticut),
and became the first student ever to study Japanese there.
In his junior year, he went to Japan for the first time and fully immersed
himself in the Japanese language and culture for a year. After graduating
(Phi Beta Kappa) in 1964, he went on to Yale University, where he received
an M.A. in East Asian Studies and a Ph.D. in History (with a concentration
in Japanese history).
Dr. Berger joined the faculty of the University of Southern California in
1970, and was the first tenured specialist in Japanese history to teach at
USC. Until his retirement in 2008, he taught Japanese history at USC to
more than 8,000 students and contributed to the Ph.D. programs of a
substantial number of graduate students in various Japan-related fields,
including his own.
Dr. Berger served for fifteen years as director of both the USC East Asian
Studies Center and the USC/UCLA Joint East Asian Studies Center,
contributing significantly to building a solid foundation for the
advancement of Japanese studies in southern California and more broadly in
the United States. Under his directorship, the Centers successfully
secured U.S. federal grant funds and enriched academic programs, graduate
fellowships and partnership between USC and UCLA. As a result, the two
universities have become a nationally important concentration of resources
and talent specializing in the study of Japan and East Asia as a regional
entity.
In addition, Dr. Berger has served in numerous important positions,
including founding member of the Steering Committee of the Southern
California Japan Seminar, director of the California Private Universities
and Colleges student exchange program with Japan, consultant for the Japan
Foundation, research fellow at the Ministry of Finance in Japan, and paper
presenter at the U.S.-Japan Workshop on Urban Earthquake Hazard Reduction.
He was also elected by his peers to a two-year term as chair of the
Northeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies.
Throughout his career, Dr. Berger has served as a conduit for mutual
understanding between Japan and the U.S., addressing a remarkable
diversity of research, teaching, and outreach themes related to Japan.
He has carried out his personal and professional mission to inform
Americans about Japan not simply by lecturing about Japanese history in
academic settings, but also by talking to a broad spectrum of interested
groups and media about many different dimensions of contemporary Japan.
To visiting Japanese, he has provided orientation seminars about the
United States to businessmen, local government officials, academicians,
and exchange students.
He is an avid fan of sumo, Japan's national sport, and was for seven years
the English-language commentator in southern California for the TV program
"Ozumo Digest". In this role, he came to be well known nationally and
locally, as well as among his students, as "Dr. Sumo."
Dr. Berger's major book publications include Parties Out of Power in
Japan, 1931-1941 (Princeton, 1977) and an annotated translation of
Kenkenroku: A Diplomatic Record of the Sino-Japanese War, 1894-95
(Princeton, 1982). He also contributed a chapter on Japanese politics in
the 1930s to the well-known seven-volume Cambridge History of Japan.
In Japan, paralleling his activities in the U.S., Dr. Berger has made
numerous scholarly and popular presentations in Japanese and published
extensively in Japanese academic journals and mass media outlets. Notably,
his classical academic study of Japanese political parties published in
1977 was later translated into Japanese under the title Taisei Yokusankai
(Yamakawa, 2001).
-------------------------End H-Japan Message------------------------
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