Faubion Bowers oral history interview

1982-07-22

Bowers, Faubion, 1917-1999; Mayo, Marlene J.

Oral history interview with Faubion Bowers conducted by Marlene Mayo on July 22, 1982. Faubion Bowers (1917-1999) was a well-known author and academic of Asian art and culture. Bowers graduated from Columbia University in 1935 and from Juilliard Graduate School of Music in 1939. From 1940 to 1941, he taught at Hosei University in Tokyo. After the conclusion of World War II, Bowers worked as the personal interpreter for General Douglas MacArthur and was present for the initial meeting between Emperor Hirohito and the general. He also worked as an official censor, where he championed for the preservation of Japanese theater. During his time with MacArthur, he fought for kabuki, a classical Japanese dance-drama, which was going to be banned for its content of feudal values. He promoted and supported kabuki plays and was awarded by the government of the Japan the Order of the Sacred Treasure in 1985 for his work. Bowers published a vast amount of highly recommended books on Japanese and Asian culture. He is most well-known for writing the first full-length, two-volume biography of Russian composer Alexander Scriabin. He was a member of the Bagby Foundation for the Musical Arts in New York City, where he spent the remainder of his life.

University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)

Oral histories

Japan--History--Allied occupation, 1945-1952

Japan; John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (U.S.)

Postwar Japan

Special Collections and University Archives

English

Collection may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. To obtain permission to publish or reproduce, please contact the University of Maryland Libraries at http://www.lib.umd.edu/special/contact/home.

Recording: 01:50:00 (audio cassette; mp3); Transcript: 53 pages (PDF)

This oral history interview is part of the Marlene J. Mayo oral histories. A guide to the full collection of Marlene J. Mayo oral histories is available in our archival collections: http://hdl.handle.net/1903.1/42478.
Accession 2009-209-GWP
An interview transcript is available.

Filename: prange-087510