Ph.D., Harvard University
Takashima Professor of Japanese Cultural Studies
Office : Humanities and Social Sciences Building, 2255
Email: mezameyo@earthlink.net
Phone : (805) 893 7570

John Nathan's fields include Japanese culture, Japanese literature, Japanese cinema, the theory and practice of translation, and the sociology of business culture. The first American to be admitted as a regular student to the University of Tokyo, he spent many years living and studying in Japan. He is the author of a definitive biography of novelist Yukio Mishima and he has also translated novels by Mishima and by Nobel laureate Kenzaburo Oe. When Oe received the Nobel Prize in 1994, Nathan accompanied him to Stockholm. Nathan is also an Emmy-award winning producer, writer and director of many films about Japanese culture and society and American business.

Selected Publications and Films

• Living Carelessly in Tokyo and Elsewhere: A Memoir (Simon & Schuster, January, 2008)
• Japan Unbound (Houghton-Mifflin, 2003)
• Oe, Kenzaburo, Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age! Translated, and with an afterword, by John Nathan. New York: Grove Press, 2002.
• "Tokyo Story: A Profile of Shintaro Ishihara." The New Yorker, April 9, 2001.
• Words, Ideas, and Ambiguities: Four Perspectives on Translating from the Japanese. Howard Hibbett, Edwin McClellan, John Nathan and Edward Seidensticker. Chicago, Ill.: Imprint Publications, 2000.
• Sony: The Private Life. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1999.
• "Kenzaburo Oe: Mapping the Land of Dreams." Japan Quarterly 42(1), January-March, 1995.
• Mishima, A Biography. Little, Brown, 1974.
• Daimyo (Documentary), 1988.
• The Colonel Goes to Japan (Documentary), 1982, Emmy Award.
• The Japanese, A Film Trilogy: Full Moon Lunch, The Blind Swordsman, Farm Song, 1979.

Teaching

• Survey of Modern Japanese Literature (Japanese 112)
• Topics in Twentieth-century Japanese (Japanese 115)
• Advanced Japanese Readings (Japanese 146)
• Japanese Cinema (Japanese 159; same course as Film Studies 120)
• Translation in Theory and Practice (East Asian Cultural Studies 185)
• Translation in Theory and Practice (East Asian Cultural Studies 285)