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© 2017 University of Chicago Library
The collection is open for research.
When quoting material from this collection, the preferred citation is: Brannen, Noah S. Papers, [Box #, Folder #], Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.
Noah Samuel Brannen was born February 2, 1924, to Calvin Ernest Brannen and Iva Galloway of Aspermont, TX. Brannen attended the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, the Yale University Divinity School, and the University of Michigan, where he earned a doctoral degree in Japanese linguistics. After becoming an ordained minister, he served as an American Baptist missionary in Japan from 1951 to 1997. During his time in Japan, he taught linguistics and translation at the Kanda Foreign Language University, the Bunka Women's University, and the International Christian University, where he eventually rose to the rank of Chairman of the Language Division. Brannen's published (and unpublished) works include numerous essays on and translations of works by Rinzō Shiina (a post-WWII Japanese Christian author) as well as a collaboration with poet and professor William Elliott on Songs They Sang in Ancient Japan, a 1995 anthology on ancient Japanese poetry. In 1997, Brannen returned to the United States, settled in California, and opened an American branch of Brannen Nihongo Service, a translation service he established in Tokyo in 1978 with Katuhisa Yamaguchi. Brannen died April 11, 2013. He was married to Ann Lee Pruet and had four children. He is buried in Aspermont, TX.
The Noah S. Brannen Papers are organized into 3 series:
Series I: Translations; This series contains correspondence, notes, drafts, manuscripts, offprints, and full journals in which Noah S. Brannen's articles and nonfiction works appear. Materials date from 1972 to 2002, and are arranged alphabetically by title, then chronologically.
Series II: Articles; This series contains correspondence, notes, drafts, manuscripts, offprints, and full journals in which Noah S. Brannen's articles and nonfiction works appear. Materials date from 1972 to 2002, and are arranged alphabetically by title, then chronologically.
Series III: Writings by Others; This series contains offprints, photocopies, and full journal issues in which essays on and critiques of Rinzo Shiina's works appear. This series also includes drafts of essays and translations by other writers with annotations by Noah S. Brannen. Materials date from 1969 to 1980, and are arranged chronologically.