Occupation Writer Role Author Name Hideo Levy | Nationality American | |
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Books Hitomaro and the birth of Japanese lyricism, Shinjuku Paradise: Roman Awards National Book Award for Translation |
The World in Japanese
Ian Hideo Levy (リービ 英雄, Rībi Hideo, born November 29, 1950) is an American-born Japanese language author. He was born in California and educated in Taiwan, America, and Japan.
Contents
- The World in Japanese
- A Home Within Foreign Borders Trailer
- Biography
- Novels
- Literary Criticism and Essays
- Manysh Scholarship
- Translations
- Honours and awards
- References

He gained attention in Japan for his work Seijōki no Kikoenai Heya published in 1992, which won the Noma Literary Award for New Writers. He is one of the first Americans to write modern literature in Japanese. For his contributions to the introduction of Japanese literature to foreign readers he was honored with a Japan Foundation Special Prize in 2007.
In 1996 his story Tiananmen was nominated for the Akutagawa Prize.
A Home Within Foreign Borders- Trailer 異境の中の故郷 予告編
Biography
Levy was born in 1950 to a Polish-American mother and a Jewish father. His father named him after a friend who was imprisoned in an internment camp during World War II. Levy's father was a diplomat, and the family moved around between Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and the United States. He graduated from Princeton University with a bachelor's degree in East Asian studies, and later received his doctorate from the same school for studying Kakinomoto no Hitomaro.
After working as an assistant professor at Princeton, he moved to Stanford University and taught there. He later left and moved to Tokyo.
While at Princeton, Levy studied the Man'yōshū. His English translation of the text won him the 1982 U.S. National Book Awardin category Translation (a split award). He has referred to the Man'yōshū scholar Susumu Nakanishi as his mentor.
Novels
English translation: A Room Where the Star-Spangled Banner Cannot Be Heard, trans. Christopher D. Scott (Columbia University Press, 2011)