Herbert Passin Collection
A distinguished scholar of contemporary Japan, Herbert Passin was born in Chicago on Dec. 16, 1916. After completing a doctorate in anthropology in 1941, Passin was inducted into the Army and sent to the Army’s Japanese language school in Ann Arbor, Michigan, for training. Assigned to duty in Tokyo in December 1945, he became chief of the Public Opinion and Sociological Research Division under Gen. Douglas MacArthur. During his tour of duty, Passin coordinated a series of sociological studies of Japanese village life to help guide U.S. Occupation policy, particularly as it dealt with land and labor reform.
The Passin Collection contains reports and notes of sociological surveys of two Japanese villages, Yuzurihara and Yawatano, conducted by U.S. Occupation authorities in 1946 and 1947, along with a wartime report by Arthur Meadow of “Japanese character structure based on Japanese film plots and thematic apperception tests on Japanese Americans,” and a post-war letter from the novelist Takami Jun.
A distinguished scholar of contemporary Japan, Herbert Passin was born in Chicago on Dec. 16, 1916. Following undergraduate study at the University of Illinois, Passin entered graduate school at Northwestern, earning a doctorate in anthropology in 1941 for his work on the Tarahumara Indians. With the war, however, his academic career took a dramatic turn, crossing the Pacific in the process. Inducted into the Army, he was sent to the Army’s Japanese language school in Ann Arbor, Michigan, for training, and from there, in December 1945, he was assigned to duty in Tokyo as chief of the Public Opinion and Sociological Research Division under Gen. Douglas MacArthur. During his tour of duty, Passin coordinated a series of sociological studies of Japanese village life to help guide U.S. Occupation policy, particularly as it dealt with land and labor reform.
Passin returned to civilian life in 1947 and to his academic pursuits. After a prolific and varied career, culminating in his appointment as chair of the Sociology Department at Columbia University and its East Asia Institute, Passin died of coronary disease on Feb. 26, 2003.
The Passin Collection contains reports and notes of sociological surveys of two Japanese villages, Yuzurihara and Yawatano, conducted by U.S. Occupation authorities in 1946 and 1947, along with a wartime report by Arthur Meadow of “Japanese character structure based on Japanese film plots and thematic apperception tests on Japanese Americans,” and a post-war letter from the novelist Takami Jun.
The collection is open for research.
Cite as: Herbert Passin Collection (MS 565). Special Collections and University Archives, W.E.B. Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Gift of James and Sibylle Fraser, October 2007.
Processed by Dexter Haven, 2008.
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Field trip to Yuzurihara
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1947 April
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Kitano, Seiichi, A report on the visit to Yuzurihara village
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1947 Apr. 11-14
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Report
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1947 Apr. 17
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Jun, Takami, Letter to Herbert Passin
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1955 Aug. 29
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Re: women during the American occupation; literary matters. In Japanese. |
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Koyama, T., A brief description about the neighborhood group system of Yawatano village
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1946 Sept. 18
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Meadow, Arnold, An anaysis of Japanese character structure based on Japanese film plots and thematic apperception tests on Japanese Americans
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1944
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Passin, Herbert, Gendai Amerika no shakai jinruigaku (TÅkyÅ : ShÅkÅ Shoin, 1949).
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1949
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Bound vol.
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Shakaigaku kenkyū (Sociological Research), vol. 1, no. 3
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1948 March
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Bound vol.
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This issue contains an article in Japanese by Passin on the social-psychological dimensions in public opinion research. |
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Shinbun kenkyū (Journalism Research), no. 7
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1948 Feb.
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Bound vol.
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This issue contains an article in Japanese by Passin on problems in public polling. |
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Yawatano Report
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1946 Sept.
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The young men’s group system of Yawatano
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1946 Sept. 19
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The regulation of Hijogumi in Yawata, Tajima-mura, Tagata-gun, Shizuoka-ken
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1946 Sept. 19
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The festival of the Yawatano shrine in Izu Province
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ca.[1946 Sept. 19]
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