Kotsuji, Abraham Setsuzo. Hiburugo Genten Nyumon [”Grammar of the Hebrew Language.”]

(JAPAN).

Tokyo

1941

Text in Japanese and Hebrew. INSCRIBED AND SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR in Hebrew, English and Japanese TO RABBI AVRAHAM MOSHE HIRSCHBURG, 1941.

Born into an aristocratic Japanese family and descended from a long line of Shinto priests, Setsuzo Kotsuji (1899-1973) was an ardent philo-Semite who founded the Institute of Biblical Research at the University of Tokyo. During the Holocaust years Kotsuji greatly assisted the hundreds of rabbis and yeshiva students from Eastern Europe (including the entire Mir Yeshiva) who fled the German onslaught by escaping to Kobe, Japan and later to Japanese-occupied Shanghai. In 1959 Kotsuji formally converted to Judaism in Jerusalem. See his memoir, From Tokyo to Jerusalem: Autobiography of a Japanese Convert (1964). This copy inscribed: “To beloved friend of heart, Prof. Rabbi A.M. Herschberg, Rector Rabbinical College of Lublin…July 3rd, 1941. Kamakura, Japan.”