Richard King Beardsley was a distinguished anthropologist who pioneered Japanese community studies. He was born in Cripple Creek, Colorado, in December of 1918, but was raised in San Francisco, California. After his graduation from the University of California in Berkley in 1939, where he graduated summa cum laude, he then served four years in the United States Navy. During Beardsley's time in the Navy, he was a Japanese language officer. After his time in the Navy, he returned to the University of California where he earned his Ph.D. in anthropology in 1947.
Beardsley's wartime experience as a Japanese language officer led him to his association with a group of other wartime language officers who had become scholars in the Center for Japanese Studies at the University of Michigan. After completeing his schooling at the University of California, he accepted a position as an anthropologist at the University of Michigan in 1947. Beardsley continued his interest with the Japanese during his time at the University of Michigan. As the Director of the Center of Japanese Studies, he also served as a member of the senate assembly and an active Chairman of the Department of Anthropology.
While continuing on with his Japanese studies, he made his first trip to Japan in 1950 with other Michigan scholars. During this trip, they intensively studied a small village in Okayama prefecture (Edna Nkwenti, 1). In 1958, Beardsley joined the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. This foundation provides fellowships for advanced professionals in all fields except the performing arts. In order to be a part of this group you must either live in the United States, Canada, Latin America, or the Caribbean. A year later the University of Chicago Press published his book Village Japan, which mostly consisted of case studies about villages in Japan and Japan's rural conditions. Later Beardsley started to write and act in a series of television programs about Asia, for the University of Michigan television center. (www.publicanthropology.org) Beardsley became one of the nation's outstanding ethnologists on Japan and was a pioneer in multidisciplinary area studies.
Richard King Beardsley died on June 9, 1978, at the age of 60, in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Nkwenti, Edna, Biography: Richard King Beardsley, 2002
New Fellows, http://www.gf.org/58fellow.html, (December, 2002)
Former link, http://www.publicanthropology.org/Archive/AA1979.htm , (December, 2002)
Written By: Carisa Thran, 2003