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Professor Barbara Ruch will be honored by the Japanese
Government for her efforts to broaden understanding of
Japanese culture.
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Ruch, Professor of Japanese Literature and Culture and
Director of the Institute for Medieval Japanese Studies,
which she established at Columbia in 1968, will receive The
Order of the Precious Crown, with Butterfly, during a
ceremony at the residence of Ambassador Siiechiro Otsuka,
Consul General of Japan, in New York, on September 10.
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The Imperial Decoration, first conferred in 1888, honors
broad cultural achievement and has historically been
conferred only rarely. It is comprised of a pendant of gold,
pearls, and multi-colored cloisonne, an art that dates back
to the 7th century in Japan.
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Ruch, who stimulated study on the medieval book and scroll
format known as Nara ehon, is a leading specialist on
the popular literature of medieval Japan and has played a
major role in bringing to light cultural studies of the
Kamakura and Muromachi periods from 1185 to 1600.
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She was the first scholar to gain entry to the 13 remaining
Imperial Buddhist Convents of Kyoto and Nara. For the past
decade, she has directed an international research team that
for the first time is surveying the diaries, records and art
treasures held by these convents from the 13th century to
the present day, and studying the religious life of the
nuns. A collection of the convent treasures was exhibited
for the first time through Ruch's efforts last fall when
several Abbesses and nuns visited the United States to
conduct a Buddhist memorial service in honor of their
spiritual founder at Columbia's St. Paul's Chapel.
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In 1991, Ruch was the first person ever to receive the
Minakata Kumagusu Prize for a life's work in the Japanese
humanities. In 1992, she was the first non-Japanese to
receive the Aoyama Nao Prize for Women's History for her
book on medieval Japanese literature and culture, written in
Japanese, Mo hitotsu no chusei zo (Another
Perspective on Medieval Japan). She founded the Donald Keene
Center of Japanese Culture at Columbia and served as its
first director.
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