Author Oliver Statler dead at 87

By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer

Oliver Statler, one of Hawai'i's most prominent authors and an internationally known student of wood block prints, Shingon Buddhism and other things Japanese, died Thursday at The Queen's Medical Center after a brief illness. He was 87.

His 1961 classic novel "Japanese Inn" gently lured Westerners into the history and heart of Japan. "I am headed for the dream-haunted calm of the old inn called Minaguchi-ya... the most Japanese place I know...," he wrote in the opening paragraphs.

The son of an Illinois physician, Statler fought the Japanese in World War II but took a civil service position with the Army after the war to visit the country that fascinated him.

His instant love of modern Japanese prints made him a friend and protege of author James Michener, who encouraged the self-taught enthusiast in a new career as writer and art researcher.

Invited to Honolulu in 1977 as a visiting professor in Asian Studies at the University of Hawai'i, Statler decided it was the place to live and work, "being closer to Japan, both physically and culturally, than any other part of the U. S."

He fondly remembered Army training on Kaua'i, and literally immersed himself in the island environment, swimming daily before dawn Ala Moana Beach Park.

Six years after joining the university, he published his landmark "Japanese Pilgrimage," a guide to the thousand-mile journey to the Eighty-Eight Sacred Places of Shikoku associated with the legendary priest and teacher Kobo Daishi, founder of the Shingon school of Buddhism.

Thousands from America and Europe have since followed his footsteps along Daishi's path, some in tours led by Statler himself.

"He was one of the most beautiful stylists of the English language that I have ever read," said James Brandon, emeritus professor of Asian theater at the University of Hawai'i. "He had an incredible ability to draw any person into the world that he was portraying, and he was portraying a world that to many people was extremely exotic and unknown."

A graduate of the University of Chicago, Statler was a member of the board of directors of Kobe College in Japan. He received an honorary doctorate of humane letters from the National College of Education in Evanston, Ill., and fellowships from both the Guggenheim and Japan foundations.

Statler is survived by distant cousins on the Mainland. In accordance with his will, memorial services will be held at a later date at the Koboji Shingon temple in Honolulu, and his ashes scattered in the ocean by friends.

"I know Oliver now can talk directly with Kobo Daishi about the Shikoku pilgrimage," said long-time friend Nobuo Morikawa of Japan, who helped Statler make his own journeys on the island.

Words that Statler once wrote of visiting the Minaguchi inn seem to describe a similar journey: "I know that in a few moments I will slip within its gate and be at home in Japan.

"I am almost at the end of my journey, and my nerves ... relax a bit...."