John M. Maki, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, died December 7, 2006, at age 97. His wife, Mary, “an ideal wife,” partner in an “ideally happy marriage,” died in 1990. (Quotations are drawn from his autobiography, Voyage through the Twentieth Century [2004].) Two sons, John A. and James P., survive him. So, too, his good reputation.
Though he devoted his career to the study of Japan and was born of Japanese parents, Jack Maki saw himself as very much a regular native-born American. He was born in Tacoma, WA, 1909, to parents who had emigrated from Japan. His hard-working parents gave him up soon after birth to be raised by an American family, the McGilvreys, who subsequently adopted him. His Japanese name, Hiroo Sugiyama, was set aside, and he became John McGilvrey, and was always treated as one of their family. But in 1936, when he was about to get married and go off to Japan on scholarship, his fiancée's father, a Japanese émigré, suggested that he adopt a more Japanese name. “Maki” satisfied that suggestion, as well as being a Japanese equivalent for the “Mc” of his adoptive name. Thus he became John McGilvrey Maki in 1936. But he could not speak Japanese at this point (he had been working on learning to read it), and his wedding ceremony to Mary (a Nisei who could speak Japanese) was “incomprehensible” to him.
Maki earned a B.A. and an M.A. in English literature from the University of Washington. “For no reason other than idle curiosity,” he chose Japanese (with which he had no familiarity) to fulfill his foreign language requirement. He originally planned to major in journalism, but was warned away from it by the dean of the school of journalism, because “no American newspaper would hire an ethnic Japanese.” (Jack confirmed this as a realistic judgment of attitudes at the time toward Asian and African ethnics.) So he became an English major. Later he was cautioned again at the University: “With my Japanese face, I could never get an appointment to teach English literature.” Fortunately, the University of Washington had a department of oriental studies. He was offered and accepted a teaching fellowship to shift to Japanese literature—a language and literature not then known to him. (In 1932, he joined the staff of the Japanese-American Courier, a four-page Seattle English-language weekly, for the first time turning his attention to Japan.) So it was that, thanks to American prejudice, Jack became a scholar of Japanese politics. (He displayed no hint of bitterness at the obstacles he had encountered.) He spent 1936–1938 in Japan on scholarship, then returned to the University of Washington to teach about Japan.
Jack was “evacuated” briefly in 1942 with other Americans of Japanese descent in the area, but, fortunately, was never transported to a “relocation” center. Through an acquaintance, he was offered and accepted a job with the FCC in the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service in Washington, D.C. After about a year there, he was transferred to the Far Eastern Section of the Office of War Information, still dealing with Japanese matters. At this time, though fully employed, he managed to write a book exploring the historic roots of Japanese militarism. Wishing to go to Japan when the war was over, he applied to the Pentagon and found a job in the Government Section of General Headquarters, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, in Tokyo in 1946. He was there for six months, carrying on a study he had proposed dealing with the operation of Japanese government in the midst of devastation. He was among those who monitored the Japanese elections in April 1946.
Having seen Hiroshima after the bombing, he wrote to Mary: “Here was physical devastation wrought by man, which proved that he does not yet have the moral sense that he needs to survive.” Later he wrote of his “lifelong antipathy toward war.” He returned from Japan to Harvard (September, 1946–June, 1948), where he earned a Ph.D. in government, with his book on Japanese militarism serving as his dissertation. He returned to the University of Washington, where he taught for 18 years and participated actively in University governance and served as president of the Phi Beta Kappa and AAUP chapters.
In 1966, John Maki came to the University of Massachusetts, Amherst to chair the Program of Asian Studies and a Four College Committee on Asian and African Studies (established through a Ford Foundation grant to Amherst, Mt. Holyoke, and Smith Colleges and UMass). In 1967, he became vice dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, with special responsibility for personnel matters. After two years, the dean resigned and Jack declined an offer to replace him, thus ending his academic administrative career. Subsequently, he served as presiding officer of the Faculty Senate and an officer of the Phi Beta Kappa and AAUP chapters.
His return to the department faculty was a happy one. Jack was an excellent teacher. His work centered on his special knowledge of Japanese history and politics, but went well beyond this. Especially notable was his creation of an introductory course, A Study of War, which successfully challenged well-established American and comparative introductory courses. In 1999, he was awarded the Chancellor's Medal, a distinct honor at UMass, Amherst, for contributions to the campus.
UMass, Amherst had long enjoyed an association with Hokkaido University, and Jack became involved with exchanges and visitor groups. In 1976, Hokkaido University awarded him an honorary Doctor of Laws degree for furthering American-Japanese understanding, promoting a sister university relationship between the two schools, and publishing a biography of William Smith Clark, an early Massachusetts Agricultural College president who spent 1876–1877 in Japan to establish a similar college there, and became a much-admired figure. In 1985, in recognition of his work to further U.S.-Japan understanding, Jack was awarded the Third Class Order of the Sacred Treasure by the emperor of Japan. A Japanese consular official recently explained to us the dignity of this high honor, which Jack surely deserved. He helped forge a sister-state agreement between the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and Hokkaido in 1987.
Among Maki's publications is his valuable translation of Japan's Commission on the Constitution: The Final Report, published by the University of Washington Press in 1980. As noted, he published a biography of W.S. Clark, widely respected in Japan for his work in founding Sapporo Agricultural College in Hokkaido. He published Conflict and Tension in the Far East in 1961, and was co-author with a former student of a study of Japan's two constitutions (1889, 1947): From Imperial Myth to Democracy. He translated a number of works, including Agawa Hiroyuki's Hiroshima novel, The Devil's Heritage.
Jack Maki regarded the American occupation of Japan as one of the great achievements of the American foreign policy—a successful case of regime change and democratization, based on a well-defined policy from the beginning. He was deeply pleased with the elimination of the old militaristic and authoritarian state in Japan and the creation of a Japanese version of democracy. (In 2004 he contrasted this sharply with America's lack of clear, sophisticated policy toward occupied Iraq.)
John Maki retired in 1980. In 1995, he made his final visit to Japan. He had a good meeting with Japanese cousins there, but concluded that the McGilvreys were his true family, that he could never be really fluent in Japanese or think in Japanese, and that “I have always been culturally American.” In person, as in his autobiography, Jack conveyed an absolute lack of bitterness, a decency, a serenity of spirit, a sense of openness and curiosity that may properly serve as a model for those who knew him. A vigorous mind, a gentle person, a fine colleague, he left a distinctive mark upon this university and his profession.
