Ezra Vogel, a Harvard scholar of Japan and China, dies at 90
By Bryan Marquard Globe Staff,Updated January 30, 2021, 4:46 p.m.
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Dr. Ezra Vogel spent most of his academic career at Harvard and published several books on Asian affairs.Matt Craig,Staff Photographer/Harvard University News Office
With the intriguing title âJapan as Number One: Lessons for America,â Ezra Vogelâs best-known book was a best seller in Japan and back home in the United States, where the Harvard University professorâs fellow citizens might not have been as welcoming of the opinion that their country was no longer first.
Ezra F. Vogel, Eminent Scholar of China and Japan, Dies at 90
A longtime scholar at Harvard, Professor Vogel wrote books that helped shape how the world viewed the two ascendant economic powers.
Ezra Vogel’s writings over six decades established him as a giant in the study of China and Japan and earned him wide-ranging influence.Credit.Ben Rosser
Ezra F. Vogel, an eminent scholar of East Asia at Harvard University whose writings about modern politics and society in China and Japan helped shape how the world understood the rise of those two Asian powers, died on Sunday in Cambridge, Mass. He was 90.
Dec 21, 2020
Ezra F. Vogel, 90, one of the country’s leading experts on East Asia through a career that spanned six decades, passed away in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Sunday due to complications from surgery.
Vogel studied an extraordinary range of substantive topics in multiple countries from the perspectives of various academic disciplines, retooling himself as a scholar many times over in his academic career.
He was originally trained as a sociologist studying the family in the United States. He devoted two years to language study and field research in Japan in 1958-60, emerging as a specialist on Japanese society. He then embarked on Chinese-language study in the 1960s, before it was possible to travel to mainland China, and became an accomplished scholar of Chinese society as well.