In Memoriam: Isaac Shapiro

6/30/71. Photo © Larry Norwalk/Japan Society. Japan Society President Isaac Shapiro at the 1971 Annual Dinner.

We note with sadness the recent passing of Isaac Shapiro, President of Japan Society from 1970 to 1977. Mr. Shapiro was the second postwar President of Japan Society, working in close partnership with its Chairman, John D. Rockefeller 3rd. Mr. Shapiro was elected President after many years on the Society’s Board and a one-year term as Interim Executive Director that began in 1969, during which he signed the contract for the construction of Japan House. Under his leadership the Society completed and moved into its new headquarters, beginning the expansion and innovation that has come to define those years.

Mr. Shapiro with his successor, The Honorable Andrew N. Overby, at his farewell reception in 1977.

“Mr. Shapiro’s autobiography, Edokko: Growing Up a Foreigner in Wartime Japan, is an inspiration to all of us in just how much a trailblazer he was in everything that he did and how his time at Japan Society—which was literally during the heyday of the Society’s expansion—was integral to its success,” notes Japan Society President and CEO Joshua W. Walker.

Mr. Shapiro was born in Japan in 1931 as a stateless person to musician parents who had fled Russia after the Revolution, and came of age during World War II in Japanese-occupied Harbin and Yokohama. At 14, by sheer happenstance, he took on the role of interpreter for the U.S. Army, and later for Marine Air Group 31, under the mentorship of marine officer John C. Munn, who subsequently became his guardian. After attending school in Hawaii, he served in the U.S. Army in Korea from 1950 to 1952. He graduated from Columbia College in 1954 and Columbia Law School in 1956, and then studied at the Institute of Comparative Law of the Sorbonne as a Fulbright Scholar. He joined the law firm of Milbank Tweed and was made a partner of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy in 1966. In 1977, Mr. Shapiro opened the firm’s first American office in Japan. In 1986, he became head of international practice at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, launching their international practice in Japan, and remained with the firm until his retirement in 2001.

Mr. Shapiro was also the founding President and Trustee of The Noguchi Museum. In 2006 he received the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays With Neck Ribbon from the emperor of Japan for his service to U.S.-Japan cultural relations.

January 1971: John D. Rockefeller 3rd (left) and Isaac Shapiro (right) chat with former Prime Minister Eisaku Sato at a special dinner in his honor.

Japan Society extends its deepest sympathies to Mr. Shapiro’s wife, Jacqueline Weiss Shapiro, and his children and grandchildren.