Trivia

Well-known Japanologist.

Graduated from Columbia University with a Bachelor's degree in 1942.

In 2011, he retired from his position at Columbia University and moved to Japan where he relinquished his American citizenship and became a Japanese citizen.

Shincho Professor Emeritus of Columbia University,.

He served as a Navy interpreter during WWII, interrogating Japanese prisoners of war and translating sailors' diaries.

He helped bring more attention to Japanese literature in the West as a translator. Works such as "Anthology of Japanese Literature" (1955) and "Modern Japanese Literature" (1956) gave English-language readers a broad introduction to Japanese poetry and prose, and helped inspire the development of Japanese studies as an academic field in the United States.

In 2008 he became one of the few non-Japanese recipients of Japan's Order of Culture.