John Curtis Perry, also known as John Perry, (July 18, 1930 – March 1, 2025) was an East Asian and Oceanic studies professor and historian. He was a professor and chair of the history department at Carleton College. Later he became the Henry Willard Denison Professor of History at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. He was also the director of that school's Maritime Studies program and founding president of the Institute for Global Maritime Studies, until his retirement in 2014.
Education Perry attended Friends schools in Washington, DC and New York City, subsequently going to Yale College for his bachelor's degree in Chinese Studies, graduating in 1952. At Yale he also pursued a master of arts in Foreign Area Studies.
Later, he attended Harvard University for his PhD in history, concluding in 1962 with his thesis Great Britain and the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1858-1905. His doctoral advisors were Edwin O. Reischauer, a Japanologist, and Robert G. Albion, a maritime historian; both the leading scholars in their fields at the time.
Career From 1962 until 1966, Perry was Assistant Professor of History at Connecticut College, and from 1966 to 1980, he was Assistant Professor, Professor of History, and Director of the East Asian Studies Program at Carleton College. In 1980, he joined the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, becoming the Henry Willard Denison Chair of History in 1981.
Perry was a visiting research associate at Harvard's Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies from 1976 to 1979, and at the Japan Institute (later renamed Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies) from 1979 to 1980. Perry also taught at Waseda University in Tokyo and the International University of Japan.
In his early career, his teaching and research focus was American-East Asian relations, especially with Japan. In the early 2000s, he shifted his focus to maritime studies in order to explore the history of human interactions via the sea. From 1985 to 1997, he was the director of the North Pacific Program, and then director of the Maritime Studies program. He taught courses including Maritime History and Globalization and The International Relations of the China Seas.
Notable students of his include Alan M. Wachman and Sung-Yoon Lee with whom Perry developed a life-long mentor-mentee relationship.
Beginning in 1995, Perry took an interest in the Russian Tsar's family dynamics, partnering with in researching the Romanovs' family history from the youth of Alexander III in the 1860s to the death in 1960 of his last surviving daughter. Their research was published in a book entitled The Flight of the Romanovs: A Family Saga (1999) and it was the first book to provide a biography of the family as a whole. Perry and Pleshakov, at the invitation of the Russian government, attended in 1998 the burial of the remains of Tsar Nicholas II and his family.
Perry was the founding president of the Institute for Global Maritime Studies, a non-profit research organization. He served as IGMS' president from 2007 to 2014 and stayed on as Chair of the Board. He was a consultant to several organizations, including the Policy Planning Branch of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Korea, the Japan Export Trade Promotion Organization (currently the Japan External Trade Organization, JETRO), and Rhumb Line LLC. He also served as a director of the Japan America Society of New Hampshire, and is a member of the Massachusetts Historical Society. He was a senior advisor and director of the Japan Society of Boston. Although Perry retired in 2015 from teaching, he continued to pursue other academic activities. That same year it was announced that he was finishing a book about the implausibility of Singapore's success. That book, titled Singapore: Unlikely Power was published in 2017 by Oxford University Press.
Family In 1957, Perry married Sarah Hollis French, of Farmington, Connecticut. They had five children and have ten grandchildren.
Perry died on March 1, 2025 in Massachusetts. He was 94.
Honors
In 1991, the Japanese Government awarded Perry the imperial decoration of the Order of the Sacred Treasure, Third Class (Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon), for his contributions to American-Japanese relations.
In 2000, Fletcher students and friends established the John Curtis Perry Fellowship for a deserving Fletcher student.
In 2018 colleagues and students of Perry came together to publish a book in his honor, Eurasia’s Maritime Rise and Global Security: From the Indian Ocean to Pacific Asia and the Arctic. In it, Admiral (ret.) and Fletcher School Dean James G. Stavridis remarked that the book was created "in celebration" of Perry, with the book's editor Geoffrey F. Gresh further noting that the volume "emerged from a workshop on the future of the world's oceans hosted at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, in the Spring of 2015 to honor the legacy and groundbreaking work of John Curtis Perry".
Writings Perry was the author of six books. He was praised for his skillful, pithy, and enjoyable writing style to convey history to the reader. Historian Roger Dingman said that "Perry writes clearly, succinctly and wittily". Raymond A. Esthus compared Perry's style to "sumi-e, the Japanese paintings that portray a scene or suggest a world of feeling with a few skillful brush strokes". Clayton James said of Beneath the Eagle's Wings: Americans in Occupied Japan "It is a model for brevity, lucidity, coherence, balance, objectivity, and perceptiveness". Walter A. McDougall wrote of Perry, "He has a keen eye for [literary] images" and Roger Dingman commented, "He has an eye for the pithy quote and the illustrative incident".
The American occupation of Japan
Summary In the book Beneath the Eagle's Wings: Americans in Occupied Japan (1980), Perry asserted that the post-WWII American occupation of Japan was a major success, despite the odds. Americans came into Japan full of vitality and energy, convinced of the superiority of their own culture and its suitability for Japan, and unencumbered by much knowledge of Japan's history or culture. These American characteristics might have been reasons for failure, but paradoxically the occupation was an extraordinary success: "a landmark in human history," Perry states.
However, despite how little Americans knew of the Japanese, the occupation policy actually did not clash head-on with Japanese ways of doing things. The nation was ruled through the Japanese government, making local military government units superfluous. The technique most widely used by occupation officials was hortatory: advice, counsel, and visits by experts invited to Japan by the supreme commander of the allied powers. This worked because of the extreme deference shown to the occupiers by the Japanese people and their leaders. Yet, although the occupation did remake the social, political and economic structures of Japan, its culture displayed a great degree of resilience. His stress is on the fascinating ways in which the occupiers and the occupied adjusted and adapted to their unprecedented encounter and, thanks to good will on both sides, made the Occupation's liabilities as insignificant as possible.
Reception The book received generally positive reviews, considered as an engaging and illustrative work recommended for the general public. Esthus characterized the book as a "fine interpretive portrait of the American experience in occupied Japan", developed with "perception and literary grace", and Clayton James called it a "first rate" account on the occupation of Japan, "demonstrating masterful knowledge of the period and its literature," making it "a delightful brief study that both general readers and teachers in the field will appreciate." Alan Miller from The New Republic considered the work an "engaging" book that "doubtless will be a cornerstone for future historians intending to construct the comprehensive study of the Occupation". On the other hand, Dingman was critical of the work, pointing to a lack of research and citation of sources and the "painting" of a "rosy view of the American occupation", while he still positively evaluated Perry's literary skills. Differing from Dingman, McDonald at the Boston Globe, judged the book to be balanced, noting that "not everything was rosy" in Perry's narration, and further noted that "Perry almost apologizes for the fact that that this is not a 'scholarly' work, which could take volumes, but this book is precise enough and includes relevant details. By being readable enough for the layman (...) it will reach a greater audience, and it should. There are lessons for today and tomorrow in the history of the occupation".
History of US-East Asia relations (1784–1975)
Summary The book Sentimental Imperialists: The American Experience in East Asia (1981, co-authored with James Thomson and Peter W. Stanley) recounts the American experience of East Asia, from approximately 1784 until the fall of Saigon in 1975, discerning four major underlying patterns: competitive nationalism, mutual ethnocentrism, multilateral ignorance, and "a distinctive American sense of mission to 'do good' that has been the driving force behind American imperialism in East Asia".
The New York Times summarized the book as "a description and deflation of a series of illusions: the illusion of a commercial pot-of-gold at the end of a Pacific rainbow, the illusion that the United States had an attainable destiny to convert China to Christianity and modern democracy, the illusion that it was within American power to build a united, anti-Communist China after 1945 and the illusion that the Vietnam war was a test of America's dedication to freedom. Underlying all these illusions was the unstated assumption that Americans were active and Asians passive and that the outcome of any transaction was determined by what Americans thought and did. This assumption united the missionary enthusiasts of the 19th century, the exponents of the United States as China's political savior and guide to the 20th century, the McCarthyites searching for those who 'lost China,' and the Johnsonian visionaries dreaming of Mekong River Authorities while directing the fighting in Vietnam from computerized and air conditioned command centers."
Reception Reviewers noted that three historians, established scholars respectively on American relations with China, the Philippines, and Japan, were beneficiaries of having been disciples of Edwin O. Reischauer and John K. Fairbank (who contributed a foreword), the leading historical interpreters of American relations with Japan and China respectively during the previous three decades. While the authors were East Asian specialists, they remained abreast of American history, being able to provide a balanced history of American-East Asian relations. It was also noted that this book was the first to provide a comprehensive overview of the topic; before then the history of US-East Asia relations having only been examined in fragments. The authors developed the book for the general reader, bringing a comprehensive text that shatters the American sentimentality and replaces it with a realistic historical portrait that highlights the multicultural complexity of East Asian countries. Several reviewers noted a lack of bibliography and footnotes, while others also recommended the book not only for the general public, but also for students, specialists, and policy makers.