Yasuzo Shimizu Papers

Collection

Identifier: RG 30-432

Staff Only

Abstract

The Shimizu Papers is a small collection of printed textual materials, most of which are in Japanese. The latter have not yet been evaluated by a Japanese speaker. The English materials comprise two items: a booklet written by Yasuzo Shimizu in 1951, and an article by the former archivist at Oberlin College published in 2005.

Dates

Creation: 1918 - 2005
Other: Date acquired: 1998 May 27

Biographical or Historical Information

Yasuzo Shimizu (1891-1988) was a Japanese educator and Christian missionary in China. He received a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan in 1916. Japan sent Shimizu to China as its first missionary in 1917, under the auspices of the Japan Kumiai (Congregationalist) Church. In Shenyang he founded a church for Japanese residents. He sought reassignment to Peking (Beijing), where he could study the Chinese language. He married his first wife, Miho Yokota while in Shenyang. They worked in famine relief in 1920, and in May of that year they founded the Sutei Gakuen grade school outside he East Gate of Peking for poor Chinese and Korean girls.

In 1924 Shimizu and his wife went to Oberlin College and enrolled in the Graduate School of Theology. Shimizu graduated with a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1926. Yasuzo’s first wife, Miho Shimizu, did not graduate. Two years after Miho died in 1933, Yasuzo married a 1927 graduate of Oberlin’s theology program, Ikuko Koizumi.

After Japan’s defeat at the end of World War II, the Chinese government confiscated the Sutei Gakuen school, and Shimizu was forced to return to Japan. In 1946 he founded Obirin Gakuen, named in honor of John Frederick Oberlin, Oberlin College’s namesake, in the western suburbs of Tokyo. To this was added a high school in 1948, a two-year junior college in 1950, and four-year university in 1966. In 1968, Oberlin College awarded Shimizu an honorary Doctorate of Divinity degree.

After Yasuzo Shimizu’s death in 1988, a graduate school was opened at the university in 1993. In 2005, Obirin awarded an honorary doctorate to Oberlin College’s president, Nancy S. Dye, who traveled there to accept it. As a tribute to the educator whose ideas had such great meaning for Shimizu, in 2006 the official English name of the school was changed from Obirin Gakuen to J. F. Oberlin University and Affiliated Schools.

Sources Consulted

Yasuzo Shimizu Papers, Oberlin College Archives Roland M. Baumann, “Reconstructing Memory and Place: Yasuzo Shimizu and Oberlin, 1924-1926,” in Yasuzo and Ikuko Shimizu in the History of the Japan-U.S. Cultural Exchange (Tokyo: Obirin University, 2005).

“Obirin and Oberlin Tighten Ties,” Oberlin Alumni Magazine, Vol. 101, No. 1 (Summer 2005)

J. F. Oberlin University web site,“History,” accessed 7 February 2018.

Note written by Anne Cuyler Salsich

Extent

0.20 Linear Feet

Language of Materials

English

Japanese

Additional Description

Arrangement

Inventory

Box 1

English

The Story of Obirin (booklet) by Yasuzo Shimizu, 1951

“Reconstructing Memory and Place: Yasuzo Shimizu and Oberlin, 1924-1926,” by Roland Baumann in Yasuzo and Ikuko Shimizu the History of the Japan-U.S. Cultural Exchange (Tokyo: Obirin University, 2005), pp. 1, 9-53 (photocopy)

Japanese

[Yearbook?] published by Fuzanbo, selected pages (copies), 1918

Preface or postscript to the several selections relating to the life and times of Yasuzo Shimizu (copy), 1989

People whom Y. Shimizu met and respected (reprint), 1989

Shimizu’s Early Life (reprint), 1991

Shimizu’s China Days, Parts I-III (reprint), 1994-96

Shimizu’s Oberlin Days (reprint), 1998

Method of Acquisition

The materials in Japanese were received on May 27, 1998 from Shigeru Kobayashi, who provided the brief descriptions (1998/073). In 2014 the Special Collections librarian transferred the booklet by Yasuzo Shimizo written in 1951 (2014/025). It was originally located in the former Graduate School of Theology Library.