コロンビア大学における アジア学の展開と角田柳作（９）

ウィリアム・Ｔ・ド・バリー　コロンビア大学名誉教授（録画）

Dr. Sachie Noguchi: Actually, that is our next question. Can you comment on the circumstances behind awarding of an honorary doctorate degree from Columbia University to Tsunoda sensei?

Professor de Bary: Well, you see by that time, the sources of Japanese tradition had been published, and although most of the actual writing was done by myself and Donald Keene, the original materials were prepared by Tsunoda sensei. So, I identified him as the primary author, and that made him well known, because of the wide circulation of that text. He was already well known on the campus, the Columbia campus, as a very distinctive figure, because he was on the campus regularly, five days a week as a librarian. But people became aware of his presence as a main source of knowledge about Japan, even though he was not a professor of Japanese Studies. And people like Sir George Samson, who was invited here first as a lecturer, or a special lecturer, or a visiting professor, and then as the first director of the East Asian Institute ﾐ and Samson recognized the tremendous store of learning that Tsunoda represented. So, for people like that, others like Harry Carman, he was the professor of American history that first interested me in Asian Studies: he also became aware of the resource that Tsunoda represented. And just as one example of how he drew on that: in the 1950s there was a program of intellectual exchange with Japan, promoted by the Rockefeller Foundation, and Carman was asked to head that program, because he had been the chairman of the higher education program in New York City as a whole. He was very well known as a leading educator. And so he was asked to set up this program for intellectual exchanges, sending American scholars to Japan, and Japanese scholars to this country. And of course, Carman referred to Tsunoda, and asked for his suggestions, with respect to leading Japanese scholars who would be invited to come. So, in that way, you see, he had what we call a considerable outreach and influence on other people. And so by the time of the early 1960s, this has become well known. Up to that point, he was a relatively obscure figure: a Japanese librarian who was mostly working with his books, and would not have been known as somebody who represented a much greater intellectual resource. But at that point, my suggestion that he be awarded an honorary degree was received with great enthusiasm and it was accepted, and he was awarded at that time.

宗像和重（早稲田大学図書館副館長）：ありがとうございます。実はインタビュー自体は1時間にわたる長いものですが、時間の関係で抄録をさせていただきました。私どももこのインタビューの部屋で、画面の左手のほうで伺っていました。時折そちらを向きながら「教養ある人」という日本語を繰り返し語れるのを大変感銘深く伺った記憶が今でもありありとしています。