写真

He is a rare Japanese literature person of an American native. It is an authority of Japanese literature and Japanese cultural studies, and there is many writing also as a literary critic. Japanese culture is introduced to the West by him, there are much achievements, and he got the Order of Cultural Merit in 2008. Although the heart rarely moves me to the foreigner who lives in Japan, this person has special concern. He will be born to a trader's home in City of New York Brooklyn 1922. At the time of childhood, having traveled Europe with the father comes to bear an interest strong against acquisition of foreign languages, such as French, by a chance. Although economic difficulties were encountered, grade-skipping is repeated, receiving a scholarship and, he entered the department of literature, Columbia Universityat the age of 16 in 1938. He becomes intimate with a Chinese student and comes to be charmed by study of Chinese, especially a Chinese character taking advantage of that. He is impressed by the Arthur Waley translation "Tale of Genji." in this period. While beginning to study Japanese on the extension of the interest to a Chinese character, he studied a Japanese history of ideas and he goes into the way of Japanese research. And the, he entered the Japanese school of the US Navy with the Japan-U.S. outbreak of war, after stacking training of Japanese language education, he worked in the navy as an information officer, and enacted as the Japanese official interpreter in the Pacific Ocean battle line. He returns to Columbia University after the end of the war, and will acquire the master's degree in 1947. In 1953, he studies in the Kyoto University graduate school, and will become acquainted with many men of culture. As for the writing about Japan, about of 30 points for the Japanese thing and about 25 things English are also published. The width for research is wide from classics, such as Monzaemon Chikamatsu, Bashō Matsuo, and Yukio Mishima, to contemporary literature, and the role which it mainly played as introduction and a commentator of the Japanese culture to English-speaking countries is also large. In 2012, he acquired Japanese nationality. This photograph is taken at the place where he was walking along the shopping center near my house.