LEVY, Ian Hideo 1950-

PERSONAL: Born 1950, in Berkeley, CA. Education: Waseda University, studied Japanese language; Princeton University, Ph.D., 1978.

ADDRESSES: Home—Japan. Agent—c/o Author's Mail, Kodansha International, Otowa YK Building, 1-17-14 Otowa, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 112-8652, Japan.

CAREER: Educator, translator, and novelist. Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, former professor of Japanese literature; Stanford University, Stanford, CA, professor of Japanese literature until 1989; Seitoku University, Tokyo, Japan, professor, beginning 1989.

AWARDS, HONORS: Columbia University/Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission translation prize, and American Book Award for translation, both 1982, both for The Ten Thousand Leaves; Noma prize for new writers (Japan), 1992, for Seijoki no kikoenai heya.

WRITINGS:

(Translator) The Ten Thousand Leaves: A Translation of the Man'yoshu, Japan's Premier Anthology of Classical Poetry, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1981, published as Man'yoshu: A Translation of Japan's Premier Anthology of Classical Poetry, University of Tokyo Press, 1981.

Hitomaro and the Birth of Japanese Lyricism (thesis), Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1984.

(Translator) Otohiko Kaga, Riding the East Wind (translation of Ikari no nai fune), Kodansha (New York, NY), 1999.

Seijoki no kikoenai heya (title means "The Room Where the Star-Spangled Banner Cannot Be Heard"), [Tokyo, Japan], 1992.

SIDELIGHTS: Ian Hideo Levy is a novelist and scholar of Japanese literature. Although American by birth, Levy's first two books were written in Japanese, making him a unique figure in his adopted country of Japan. Levy said in the Daily Yomiuri: "Being an outsider and insider at the same time—keeping a tension between my perspective and writing in Japanese—is very important." In his novel Seijoki no kikoenai heya Levy uses the Japanese language to depict Japanese lives and values from an outsider's point of view.

Born in Berkeley, California in 1950, the son of a U.S. diplomat, Levy was given the middle name Hideo by a Japanese-American friend of his father's. He grew up in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and in the early 1960s spent four years living in Virginia with his mother. In 1967 he moved to Japan to live with his father at the U.S. consulate in Yokohama. Though his first stay in Japan was only a year, Levy has lived in his adopted country—aside from teaching and studying stints—for over three decades.

Levy's translation of the classic Japanese poetry anthology The Ten Thousand Leaves: A Translation of the Man'yoshu, Japan's Premier Anthology of Classical Poetry received the American Book Award in 1982. In 1999 he completed a translation of Otohiko Kaga's 1982 novel Riding the East Wind. Writing in Japanese, Levy has also published an original work of fiction, the 1992 novel Seijoki no kikoenai heya—"The Room Where the Star-Spangled Banner Cannot Be Heard." He became the first Westerner to win a major Japanese literary award when he received the Noma prize for best new authors. Levy's story, semi-autobiographical, focuses on the troubled teenage son of an American diplomat who is caught between two worlds and escapes by plunging himself fully into Japanese culture.

Noting that through his novel Levy has "challenged the faith of the Japanese in the impossibility of foreigners mastering their complex language," a Christian Science Monitor contributor noted that Levy's novel received a warm critical reception from "some of the country's leading writers." Commenting on the risk of writing in Japanese as a Westerner in the Daily Yomiuri, Levy explained: "I expose myself to criticism from Japanese people, when I write in Japanese."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, October 15, 1999, review of Riding the East Wind, p. 20.

Christian Science Monitor, December 1, 1992, "American Wins Japanese Literary Prize," p. 15.

New York Times Book Review, December 5, 1999, Dianne Highbridge, review of Riding the East Wind, p. 45.

Publishers Weekly, September 27, 1999, review of Riding the East Wind, p. 69.

Yomiuri Shimbun/Daily Yomirui, April 8, 1993, Ginko Kobayashi, "American's 'Novel' Perspective Scribed in Japanese," p. 7; June 2, 2002, review of Riding the East Wind.*