Authors

Hiromi Ito came to national attention in Japan in the 1980s for her groundbreaking poetry about pregnancy, childbirth, and female sexuality. 

Recipient of the 43rd Bukkyo Dendo Distinguished Service Award. The honour is presented to personalities who have made important contributions to the promotion of Buddhism.

The author of Japanese Girl at the Siege of Changchun. She was born in China in 1941, lived through the Chinese Revolutionary War, and returned to Japan in 1953.

A pioneering woman adventurer who wrote many books about faraway places.

Involved with Japan includes two decades of performing Japanese arts on two continents. She plays shamisen, the three drums of the kabuki orchestra (kotsuzumi, otsuzumi, and shimedaiko), and Japanese dance.

Author of Behind the Pink Curtain: The Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema  (FAB Press) and the Historical Dictionary of Japanese Cinema (Scarecrow Press), as well as co-author, with Tom Mes, of The Midnight Eye Guide to New Japanese Film (Stone Bridge Press).

Jeffrey Angles is a writer and professor of Japanese at Western Michigan University. 

Jim Rion is a licensed international kikizakeshi (like a sake sommelier), certified sake professional, and freelance translator and writer working in the sake industry since 2018.

An artist and entrepreneur from Beijing, China, currently uses his artistry to tell the story of China.

Author of Sake's Hidden Storie and The Sake Notebook, both self-published ebooks, and coauthor of Sake Pure and Simple.

Has written or translated over twenty books on Japan's martial, sacred, and erotic ways and is a respected authority on esoteric Japanese culture. He has practiced and taught Aikido all over the world. Stevens' Aikido rank is 7th dan Aikikai.

Covered classical music and Japanese pop for City Paper, Baltimore's alternative weekly, and is also an editor at jrockonline.com. She wrote the official English biography for the breakthrough band X JAPAN and presented a panel on Jrock at the Anime Central anime convention in 2004. 

Writer and editor based in San Francisco. She is the former editor-in-chief of Animerica: Anime & Manga Monthly.

Was a Japanese scholar who contributed to the development of arts in Japan. Outside Japan, he is chiefly remembered today as the author of The Book of Tea.

A Japanese poet, essayist, and novelist. He was a student of the great novelist Soseki Natsume, who lavishly praised the "freshness and dignity" of Naka's prose and encouraged the first publication of The Silver Spoon.

Celebrated novels include “Misaki” (The Cape), which won the Akutagawa Prize in 1976, and “Karekinada” (The Sea of Withered Trees), which won both the Mainichi and Geijutsu Literary Prizes in 1977.

With a talent for analyzing language trends led to her first book, Womansword: What Japanese Words Say About Women, originally published by Kodansha International in 1987.

Ko Shinjo is a writer from Tokyo who made his debut in 2012 with Narrow House, which won the 36th Subaru Literature Award. 

Was born in Tokyo in 1929. A scriptwriter known for her domestic dramas for radio and television, she died in a tragic plane crash in 1981.

A writer, known best for his books about Japan, especially his collections of Japanese legends and ghost stories, such as Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things.

Hiromi Kawakami is one of Japan’s most popular novelists.

Writes for children through adults and is the author of the novel Ash (Stone Bridge Press), the young adult verse novel Orchards (Delacorte/Random House), and the picture book The Wakame Gatherers (Shen's Books). 

An alcoholic, Ozaki witnessed the birth of the modern free verse haiku movement. His verses are permeated with loneliness, most likely a result of the isolation, poverty and poor health of his final years.

A long-time opera buff, served as an E.U. diplomat in Japan, highly regarded for his intimate understanding of Japanese-European relations.

Has lived in every kind of Japanese residence and community and travels regularly to Japan for his San Francisco-based import/export business.

Born in San Francisco, California to Japanese immigrants. During World War II, she was part of a diaspora that took her to Stockton, California, Rohwer, Arkansas, and Denver, Colorado.

A scholar and translator who has long been immersed in life in rural Japan and author of the Japanese-language books Prewar Kagoshima and Island Life.

Author of The Blonde Geisha and numerous other books and articles, was previously the Japan-based consultant on KCBS-TV and MSNBC. She lives in Southern California.

John Dougill has lived in Japan since 1994 and is the author of several books about the country.

Besides his English publications, published five books in Japan, short stories in a wide variety of journals and anthologies and journalism in a range of publications including Blackwood's Magazine, London Magazine, Japan Times and Gay Times.

Former editor of Manga Max magazine and the translator of dozens of anime, including Samurai Gold, Slow Step, and Plastic Little. A winner of the Japan Festival Award for outstanding contributions to the understanding of Japanese culture, Clements regularly appears at events worldwide.

Author of Kyoto Machiya Restaurant Guide, Kyoto Gardens, Kyoto: City of Zen, and The Alluring World of Geiko and Maiko. She lives in a 120-year-old converted weaving studio in Nishijin, Kyoto's weaving and dyeing district.

Won the 1954 Akutagawa Prize for his book Purusaido Shokei (Poolside Scene). Shōno's other award-winning books include Seibutsu (Still Life ), for which he won the Shinchosha literary prize,

Along with the poet-priest Saigyō he is representative of the literary recluses of his time, and his celebrated essay Hōjōki ("An Account of a Ten-Foot-Square Hut") is representative of the genre known as "recluse literature" (sōan bungaku).

Was a Japanese novelist and poet of children's literature from Hanamaki, Iwate, in the late Taishō and early Shōwa periods.

Co-founder of the Japan Woodworker in Berkeley in 1971, and later Hida Japanese Tool Company.

Teaches Japanese and translates it together with her husband.

He is most known for his collaborations with Ozu, which began with Noda supplying the script for the director's first feature Sword of Penitence (1927) and led to such postwar works as Tokyo Story (1953), regarded by many critics as one of the greatest films of all time.

Received his doctorate in Japanese from the University of Hawai‘i—Manoa in 2007 and is now an associate professor at the University of Vermont. He is one of the leading researchers in English on Shun Medoruma.

Co-authors of Basic Patterns of Chinese Grammar: A Student’s Guide to Correct Structures and Common Errors (Stone Bridge Press, 2011) and Chinese Proverbs and Popular Sayings: With Observations on Culture and Language (Stone Bridge Press, 2012).