- 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.
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