Donald Howard Shively born in Kyoto

Kyoto

is a city in the central part of the island of Honshū, Japan. It has a population close to 1.5 million. Formerly the imperial capital of Japan, it is now the capital of Kyoto Prefecture, as well as a major part of the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto metropolitan area.-History:...

, Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 as the son of American missionaries, was a scholar of Japanese literature

Japanese literature

Early works of Japanese literature were heavily influenced by cultural contact with China and Chinese literature, often written in Classical Chinese. Indian literature also had an influence through the diffusion of Buddhism in Japan...

 and culture. He led the post-war Japanese studies in the United States. Dr.Shively died of Shy-Drager syndrome at the age of 84 in Oakland, California.

Career

Donald Howard Shively was born in Kyoto, and was mostly educated there until 1940, when he entered Harvard. Shively received his bachelor's degree, master's degree and a Ph.D. there in 1946, 1947 and 1951 respectively.

Dr.Shively taught at UC Berkeley

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

 from 1950 to 1962, at Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 from 1962 to 1964, and at Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 from 1964 to 1983. From 1983 onwards, he returned to Berkeley, and retired there in 1992, where he was head of the East Asian Library.

Most notable among his works around popular culture in Edo period

Edo period

The , or , is a division of Japanese history which was ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family, running from 1603 to 1868. The political entity of this period was the Tokugawa shogunate....

 of Japan is the translation of The Love Suicides at Amijima

The Love Suicides at Amijima

The Love Suicides at Amijima is a domestic play by Japanese playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon. Originally written for the jōruri puppet theatre, it was adapted into kabuki shortly after its premiere. The play is one of Chikamatsu's more famous plays.It was first performed 3 January 1721...

, a famous kabuki

Kabuki

is classical Japanese dance-drama. Kabuki theatre is known for the stylization of its drama and for the elaborate make-up worn by some of its performers.The individual kanji characters, from left to right, mean sing , dance , and skill...

 play written by Chikamatsu Monzaemon

Chikamatsu Monzaemon

Chikamatsu Monzaemon was a Japanese dramatist of jōruri, the form of puppet theater that later came to be known as bunraku, and the live-actor drama, kabuki...

.

Shively was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun

Order of the Rising Sun

The is a Japanese order, established in 1875 by Emperor Meiji of Japan. The Order was the first national decoration awarded by the Japanese Government, created on April 10, 1875 by decree of the Council of State. The badge features rays of sunlight from the rising sun...

by the Japanese government in 1982 for his extensive research in Japanese studies.