is an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

-born

Japanese language is spoken natively by about 128 million people, primarily by Japanese people and primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language. Japanese belongs to the Japonic or Japanese- Ryukyuan language family. There have been ma ...

author. Levy was born in California and educated in Taiwan, the US, and Japan. He is one of the first Americans to write modern literature in Japanese, and his work has won the Noma Literary New Face Prize and the

Yomiuri Prize The is a literary award in Japan. The prize was founded in 1949 by the Yomiuri Shinbun Company to help form a "strong cultural nation". The winner is awarded two million Japanese yen and an inkstone. Award categories For the first two years, a ...

, among other literary prizes.

Biography

Levy was born in

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emer ...

, on 29 November 1950 to a Polish-American mother and a Jewish father. His father named him after a friend who was imprisoned in an internment camp during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. Levy's father was a diplomat, and the family moved around between

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

and the United States. He graduated from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

with a bachelor's degree in East Asian studies, and later received his doctorate from the same school for studying the poet

Kakinomoto no Hitomaro Kakinomoto no Hitomaro (柿本人麻呂 or 柿本人麿; – ) was a Japanese ''waka'' poet and aristocrat of the late Asuka period. He was the most prominent of the poets included in the ''Man'yōshū'', the oldest ''waka'' anthology, but ap ...

. While at Princeton, Levy studied the ''

Man'yōshū The is the oldest extant collection of Japanese (poetry in Classical Japanese), compiled sometime after AD 759 during the Nara period. The anthology is one of the most revered of Japan's poetic compilations. The compiler, or the last in ...

''. His English translation of the text was one of the finalists of the 1982 U.S.

National Book Award The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors. The Nat ...

in the Translation category."National Book Awards – 1982"

National Book Foundation The National Book Foundation (NBF) is an American nonprofit organization established, "to raise the cultural appreciation of great writing in America". Established in 1989 by National Book Awards, Inc.,Edwin McDowell. "Book Notes: 'The Joy Luc ...

. Retrieved 2012-03-10.
There was a "Translation" award from 1966 to 1983. He has referred to the ''Man'yōshū'' scholar

Susumu Nakanishi is a scholar of Japanese literature, particularly of the ''Man'yōshū''. Overview He is the honorary president of the Nara Prefecture Complex of Manyo Culture, president of the Koshinokuni Museum of Literature, and has been a guest lecture ...

as his mentor. After working as an assistant professor at Princeton, he moved to

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

and taught there. He later left and moved to Tokyo. Levy gained attention in Japan as the first foreigner to win the Noma Literary Award for New Writers, which he received in 1992 for his work ''A Room Where the Star-Spangled Banner Cannot Be Heard''. In 1996, his story ''Tiananmen'' was nominated for the

Akutagawa Prize The is a Japanese literary award presented biannually. Because of its prestige and the considerable attention the winner receives from the media, it is, along with the Naoki Prize, one of Japan's most sought after literary prizes. History The ...

. For his contributions to the introduction of Japanese literature to foreign readers, he was honored with a Japan Foundation Special Prize in 2007. In 2017, he won the

Recognition

* 14th Noma Literary New Face Prize, 1992 *

Japan Foundation Award The Japan Foundation Awards honor individuals and organizations for significant contributions to "the enhancement of mutual understanding between Japan and other countries." History Activities in an academic or cultural field have been presented ...

, 2007Japan Foundation
/ref> * 68th

, 2017

Works

Novels

* * * * * * * *

Literary criticism and essays

* * * * * * * * * *

Man'yōshū scholarship

*''Hitomaro and the Birth of Japanese Lyricism'' (

Princeton University Press Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large. The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial su ...

1984) *''The Ten Thousand Leaves: A Translation of the Man Yoshu, Japan's Premier Anthology of Classical Poetry (Princeton Library of Asian Translations)'' (

1987) * ''Love Songs from the Man'yoshu'' (

Kodansha International is a Japanese privately-held publishing company headquartered in Bunkyō, Tokyo. Kodansha is the largest Japanese publishing company, and it produces the manga magazines ''Nakayoshi'', ''Afternoon'', ''Evening'', ''Weekly Shōnen Magazine'' an ...

2000) *''Man'yo Luster'' (Pie Books 2002)

Translations

Otohiko Kaga was a Japanese author. Biography Kaga was born in Tokyo, and studied psychiatry and criminology at the University of Tokyo Medical School. He worked in a hospital and then prison before going to France in 1957 for further studies. After returni ...

References

External links

Hideo Levy
at J'Lit Books from Japan

at JLPP (Japanese Literature Publishing Project)

Video of acceptance speech for Japan Foundation Special Prize. * Video of lecture given at Stanford University Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, February 11, 2010. {{DEFAULTSORT:Levy, Hideo Ian 1950 births Living people American Japanologists American people of Polish descent American translators Exophonic writers Japanese–English translators Japanese-language writers Man'yōshū National Book Award winners American male non-fiction writers Yomiuri Prize winners