was a

professor emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

Japanese literature Japanese literature throughout most of its history has been influenced by cultural contact with neighboring Asian literatures, most notably China and its literature. Early texts were often written in pure Classical Chinese or , a Chinese-Japanes ...

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 ...

Education and career

He earned a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

in comparative literature in 1961. In 2004–2005 he served as the honorary curator of the American Haiku Archives at the California State Library in

Sacramento, California ) , image_map = Sacramento County California Incorporated and Unincorporated areas Sacramento Highlighted.svg , mapsize = 250x200px , map_caption = Location within Sacramento C ...

. He was given that honor "in recognition of Ueda’s many decades of academic writing about haiku and related genres and his leading translations of Japanese haiku." The library added that "Ueda has been our most consistently useful source for information on Japanese haiku, as well as our finest source for the poems in translation, from Bashô to the present day." His work on female poets and 20th century poets "had an enormous impact".

Bibliography

He is an author of numerous books about Japanese literature and in particular

Haiku is a type of short form poetry originally from Japan. Traditional Japanese haiku consist of three phrases that contain a ''kireji'', or "cutting word", 17 '' on'' (phonetic units similar to syllables) in a 5, 7, 5 pattern, and a ''kigo'', or se ...

Senryū is a Japanese form of short poetry similar to haiku in construction: three lines with 17 (or , often translated as syllables, but see the article on for distinctions). tend to be about human foibles while haiku tend to be about nature, and a ...

Tanka is a genre of classical Japanese poetry and one of the major genres of Japanese literature. Etymology Originally, in the time of the ''Man'yōshū'' (latter half of the eighth century AD), the term ''tanka'' was used to distinguish "short poem ...

, and Japanese poetics. *''The Old Pine Tree'' (1962) *''Literary and Art Theories in Japan'' (1967) *''

Matsuo Bashō born then was the most famous poet of the Edo period in Japan. During his lifetime, Bashō was recognized for his works in the collaborative '' haikai no renga'' form; today, after centuries of commentary, he is recognized as the greatest ma ...

: The Master Haiku Poet'' (1970) *''Modern Japanese Haiku, an Anthology'' (1976) *''Modern Japanese Writers and the Nature of Literature'' (1976) *''Explorations: Essays in Comparative Literature'' (1986) *''Bashō and His Interpreters: Selected Hokku With Commentary'' (1992) *''Modern Japanese Tanka'' (1996) *''Modern Japanese Writers and the Nature of Literature'' (1996) *''The Path of Flowering Thorn: The Life and Poetry of

Yosa Buson was a Japanese poet and painter of the Edo period. Along with Matsuo Bashō and Kobayashi Issa, Buson is considered among the greatest poets of the Edo Period. He is also known for completing haiga as a style of art, working with haibun prose ...

'' (1998). *''Light Verse from the Floating World: An Anthology of Premodern Japanese Senryu'' (2000) *''Far Beyond the Field: Haiku by Japanese Women'' (2003) *''Dew on the Grass: The Life and Poetry of

Kobayashi Issa was a Japanese poet and lay Buddhist priest of the Jōdo Shinshū. He is known for his haiku poems and journals. He is better known as simply , a pen name meaning Cup-of-teaBostok 2004. (lit. "one up oftea"). He is regarded as one of the four ...

'' (2004) *''Mother of Dreams: Portrayals of Women in Modern Japanese Fiction'' (2004)

References

American literary critics Japanese literary critics Japanese literature academics American writers of Japanese descent American academics of Japanese descent English-language writers from Japan Japanese emigrants to the United States 1931 births 2020 deaths {{AsianAmerican-stub