Eizaburō Okuizumi Memorial Book Fund

In 2017 the University of Chicago Library launched the Eizaburō Okuizumi Memorial Book Fund, an endowment in honor of the late Mr. Eizaburō Okuizumi, who served as Japanese Studies Librarian at the University from 1984 to 2013.

Mr. Okuizumi dedicated his nearly thirty-year tenure to the enhancement of the Japanese Studies Collection, which helped the Collection to achieve its present status as one of the most comprehensive of its kind in North America. Moreover, his scholarly work as bibliographer and historian resulted in contributions of considerable import to the field of Japanese studies—particularly in the areas of early-twentieth-century Japanese emigration and the postwar occupation of Japan. This memorial endowment is designed to aid the maintenance and further development of the Library’s strong research holdings in Japanese studies, so as to carry forward Mr. Okuizumi’s legacy and our continuing mission to nurture Japanese studies on campus and beyond.

The Book Fund was established with a seed of more than $100,000, comprised of a gift from the Committee on Japanese Studies at the Center for East Asian Studies of the University of Chicago and a bequest from retired University of Chicago Medical School researcher Ayako Hamamoto, who had cherished the vast repository of Japanese literature at the Library. We greatly appreciate the ongoing contributions of the Okuizumi family, Japanese publishers, and individual donors. As a permanent endowment, this Book Fund will make a lasting difference to the Library’s Japanese Studies Collection in honor of Mr. Okuizumi.

If you wish to support the Japanese Studies Collection at the University of Chicago Library by contributing to this endowment, please visit Support the Library.