Delmer Brown

Delmer Myers Brown (November 20, 1909 – November 9, 2011) was an American academic, historian, writer, translator and Japanologist. He was a professor of Japanese history at the University of California at Berkeley.

Early life, education, and personal life Brown was born on November 20, 1909, in Harrisonville, Missouri, and grew up in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1925, he moved with his family to Santa Ana, California. He attended Santa Ana Junior College and then Stanford University, where he graduated with a degree in history in 1932.

Instead of going to law school, as originally planned, Brown took a position teaching English at a prestigious Japanese Imperial "Higher School" in Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan. It was there that he met and married Mary Nelson Logan in 1934.

During World War II, Brown served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy.

In 1987, Mary died after 53 years of marriage. Brown was widowed twice more; by Margaret Young Brown in 2003 and Louise K. Weamer in 2010. He is survived by his companion Pauline Howland, two sisters, a son and three step-children, two granddaughters, and six great-grandchildren. The development of JHTI involved negotiations with the University of Tokyo Press and Japan's National Institute of Japanese Literature.

Selected works In an overview of writings by and about Brown, OCLC/WorldCat lists roughly 40+ works in 80+ publications in 4 languages and 1,500+ library holdings.

Nationalism in Japan: An Introductory Historical Analysis, 1955 Japan, 1967 The future and the Past: A Translation and Study of the Gukanshō, an Interpretative History of Japan Written in 1219 by Jien, 1979 Chronology of Japan = 日本の歴史, 1987 An Introduction to Advanced Spoken Japanese, 1987 The Cambridge History of Japan, Vol. 1, Ancient Japan , 1993

Honors Order of the Sacred Treasure, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon (Japan)