Frank Hawley

Biographical Sketch

Hawley was born in Stockton-on-Tees in Durham England. After graduating from Liverpool University, he visited various areas in his study of the East.
He came to Japan in 1931 as a language teacher at the Tokyo College of Foreign Studies. He was proficient at Japanese, and he collected old books through his bibliographic studies.
At the start of the Second World War he was sent back to England in 1941. He returned to Japan after the war where he worked as a special correspondent for the Times (U.K.). He lived in Yamashina Kyoto until he died at the age of 55.

Collection

He collected an abundance of high quality old books, however more characteristic of the collections are books on herbs, literature on whales and whaling, books related to Ryukyu (old Okinawa), material on Japanese paper (washi), and old dictionaries.
The more than 17,000 books he collected before the war were handled under the Enemy Materials Management Law and relegated to the "Enemy Materials Library." They were purchased by Keio University through the Mitsui Trust Bank and are kept in the Mita Book Repository. Approximately 9,300 volumes that escaped being burned during the war were returned to Hawley.
Immediately after the war, valuable books came into the market, which stimulated Hawley’s collecting and completed his collection. He collected a number of old books including such volumes as the "Kasuga-ban," the "Koya-ban", and the "Gozan-ban".

Location of the Collection

Hawley began selling his collection in the latter half of 1946 and about 70 types of Gozan-ban were bought by the Tenri Central Library. Auctioned off after his death, the remainder of the collection was scattered and lost. There are 431 items related to Japanese paper (washi) that are held in the Tenri Central library, and 936 items on Ryukyu are in the University of Hawaii's collection.
The National Diet Library has about 10 items featuring Kokatsuji (old style printing).

Portrait

Van Gulik, R. H. In Memoriam. Frank Hawley (1906-1961). (Monumenta Nipponica, vol. 16, no. 3/4, 1960, pp. 434–447.)

Reference

Yokoyama, Manabu. Shomotsu ni miserareta Eikokujin: Frank Hawley to Nihon bunka, Yoshikawa kobunkan, 2003. [GK442-H2]