Bownas, Geoffrey, 1923 - 2011
Person
Dates
- Existence: 1923 - 2011
Biography
Geoffrey Bownas was born in Yeadon, West Yorkshire, in 1923, and studied at Bradford Grammar School. He won a scholarship to Queen’s College Oxford to read classics, but when recruited into the army in 1942 was ‘volunteered’ to learn Japanese and work on Japanese military codes. In 1948, Bownas returned to Oxford to study Chinese, then taught at the University of Kyoto. In 1954, he established the department of Japanese Studies at Oxford, and then became the University of Sheffield’s first professor of Japanese Studies. He retired in 1980, and was made Emeritus Professor. In 1999, he was awarded the Order of the Sacred Treasure by the Japanese government, and was appointed CBE in 2003. He died in February 2011.
Found in 1 Collection or Record:
Bownas Recordings
Fonds
Reference code: CD 7
Scope and Contents
Collection consisting of recordings of interviews, plays, poetry and other works relating to Japan, made by Professor Geoffrey Bownas between 1958 and 1980. They include interviews with Kishida Kyoko, Abe Kōbō and Nakamura Utaemon about the Japanese author Mishima Yukio, Bownas’s translation of Naoya Uchimura’s play Marathon, and Japanese poetry. Some were broadcast on the BBC in the late 1950s and early 1960s.For further details of this collection please see the box list in the...
Dates:
1958 - 1980
Found in:
Special Collections and Archives