The life and work of Edgerton Herbert Norman, a Canadian diplomat and researcher of modern Japanese history who committed suicide in the 1950s amid allegations that he was a communist sympathizer, is now being spotlighted.
Norman, often referred to as "a tragic historian," was recently honored by the Canadian Embassy, which named its library after him. And Iwanami Shoten Publishers, a major publishing house in Tokyo, recently reissued a set of four of his books. In July, Norman's hard-to-obtain essays will also be published.
"Norman was the first foreigner who did research on modern Japan," said Masanao Kano, professor emeritus at Tokyo's Waseda University. "His work on Japan's modern history contributed to getting rid of Japan's images as an unintelligible country."