Asada was the first person to receive a doctorate from the University of Chicago. He was a Japanese scholar of Semitic languages and Old Testament biblical studies. He received his symbolic doctoral hood at the June 26, 1893, commencement for his dissertation: "The Hebrew Text of Zecheriah 1-8, Compared with the Different Ancient Versions." Asada's importance lies not just in his being U. of C.'s first doctoral recipient. He also was among a group of turn-of-the-century Japanese intellectuals who helped open his traditionally insular country to the West by actively encouraging and devising ways to teach English to the Japanese. In recent years, for instance, it was discovered that he was the author of the first English textbook and reader used widely in Japan at the start of the 20th Century. "At that time, the English education of Japanese students was very important for the development of Japan, so it could catch up with the West," said Makoto Oka, a great-grandson of Asada's and associate professor of physics at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. Despite this major contribution, Asada "was disappointed," said William Sibley, an Asada buff and an associate professor at U. of C.
He could not earn a living in Japan doing what he loved, studying the ancient languages of the Near East-Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic. "That was not a big item in late 19th-century Japan," Sibley said. Born in 1865, Asada trained at what was then Tokyo Imperial University. He left a promising career in the sciences after he converted to Christianity. In the United States, he first attended Garrett Theological Seminary in Evanston, then Columbia University. William Rainey Harper, the U. of C.'s first president, invited Asada to enroll at his new university after being impressed by the young scholar during a summer school session Harper conducted. A fellow student wrote that Asada "certainly had no superior among us (his fellow graduate students) in conversational readiness and contagious humor." On returning to Japan, he taught English and became an educational administrator, keeping his link to the U. of C. as president of its Japan alumni club. He died in 1914 at age 49. (ref: The Chicago Tribune-online- June 11, 1993)