Robert Lyons Danly – 50th Reunion Essay

Robert Lyons Danly

Date of Death: 27-Apr-1997

College: Silliman

(This memorial, with corrected spelling, appeared in the October 1998 Class Notes.)

Robert Danly died of a brain tumor in 1997. He was professor of Japanese literature at the University of Michigan, but achieved immediate fame among translators and scholars of Japanese literature with his Yale PhD dissertation on the writings of a woman of letters in Meiji, Japan. At the time of his death, he had just signed a contract for an important new translation of The Tale of Genji. He was also a popular teacher, and will be remembered for his brilliant wit, dry humor, and wide range of interests.

From the U-M News: Award-winning writer and translator Robert Lyons Danly, University of Michigan professor of Japanese language and culture, died of a brain tumor April 27, 1997. Danly, who had taught Japanese literature at the U-M since 1980, achieved immediate fame among translators and scholars when his doctoral dissertation—a biography of writer Higuchi Ichiyo that included translations of her short stories—received the American National Book Award for translation in 1982.

At the U-M, Danly directed a popular translation workshop for the Program in Comparative Literature. He also served as director of the Center for Japanese Studies in 1989-93, during which he transformed the Center’s publishing program into one of the most highly regarded publishing series in Japanese literature, culture and history in the United States.

Born Jan. 3, 1947, in Oak Park, Illinois, Danly earned his undergraduate degree and doctorate from Yale University, and also worked as a copywriter for the Asia Advertising Agency in Tokyo.

“Danly will be remembered by his friends and colleagues for his brilliant wit, his dry humor, his fine discernment, his stubborn tenacity and his extraordinary range of interests—from Kabuki theater to Broadway musicals, from Japanese architecture to the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, from Ed Debevecs to the Four Seasons,” said Stuart McDougal, director of the Program in Comparative Literature.