28 Facts About John Nathan

John Nathan is Professor Emeritus of Japanese Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

John Nathan was born in New York City and spent part of his childhood in Tucson, Arizona.

John Nathan's father was a painter, and his grandfather was a reporter at The Jewish Daily Forward.

In 1961, John Nathan graduated from Harvard College, where he studied under Edwin O Reischauer.

John Nathan moved to Japan directly after, teaching English as a second language to native Japanese speakers at a newly opened English conversation school in Tokyo that had been funded by the Ford Foundation.

John Nathan was hired to teach English literature at Tsuda College, a school for young women.

John Nathan became the first American to pass the entrance exams of the University of Tokyo and be admitted as a traditional student.

John Nathan lived in Tokyo for close to five years and departed Japan in 1966 to start a PhD program at Columbia University in New York.

John Nathan dropped out of Columbia and began teaching a class in modern Japanese literature at Princeton University.

In September 1968, John Nathan moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he had been appointed a junior fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard University.

The status the society conferred allowed John Nathan to undergo oral examinations in candidacy for a PhD without having attended graduate school.

John Nathan accepted a full-time teaching appointment at Princeton University in 1972, resigning from the position in 1979.

John Nathan is currently Professor Emeritus of Japanese Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

John Nathan previously served as the Koichi Takashima Professor of Japanese Cultural Studies at UCSB.

John Nathan's works focus on Japanese culture, Japanese literature, Japanese cinema, the theory and practice of translation, and the sociology of business culture.

In 1965, at the age of 25, John Nathan translated Mishima's The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea.

John Nathan was more interested in translating the work of Kenzaburo Oe.

John Nathan ultimately refused to translate Mishima's 1964 novel, opting instead to translate Kenzaburo Oe's 1964 novel.

In 1974, John Nathan authored Mishima: A Biography, a biography of Yukio Mishima.

In 1994, Kenzaburo Oe was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature and John Nathan accompanied him to Stockholm.

In 1972, John Nathan provided the script for Hiroshi Teshigahara's film Summer Soldiers about US Army deserters seeking refuge in Japan.

John Nathan left Princeton in the late 1970s to pursue filmmaking and created three documentaries about the Japanese.

In 1999, John Nathan published Sony: The Private Life, a biography of Sony Corporation.

In 2008, John Nathan published his memoir, Living Carelessly in Tokyo and Elsewhere.

In 2013, John Nathan published a translation of Natsume Soseki's unfinished novel Light and Dark.

In 2018, John Nathan published a biography of Soseki titled Soseki: Modern Japan's Greatest Novelist.

John Nathan married Japanese artist Mayumi Oda in 1962, in a Shinto wedding ceremony at the Prince Hotel in Akasaka.

In 1984, John Nathan married Diane Siegelman, with whom he has a daughter and a son.