Name Jay Rubin | Role Translator | |
 | ||
Books The Sun Gods, Haruki Murakami and the M, Modern Japanese Writers, 日本語の秘訣, Growth of a Union: The Life and T | ||
Jay rubin
Jay Rubin (born 1941) is an American academic and translator. He is most notable for being one of the main translators into English of the works of the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami. He has also written a guide to Japanese, Making Sense of Japanese (original title Gone Fishin'), and a biographical literary analysis of Murakami.
Contents
He has a Ph.D. in Japanese literature from the University of Chicago. He taught at the University of Washington for eighteen years, and then moved on to Harvard University, which he left in 2008. In his early research career he focused on the Meiji state censorship system. More recently Rubin has concentrated his efforts on Murakami, and Noh drama. His most recent publications are Modern Japanese Writers (Scribners, 2001), and Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words (Harvill, 2002; Vintage, 2005). His translation of 18 stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa appeared as a Penguin Classics in 2006. His debut novel, The Sun Gods, is set to release in May 2015 (Chin Music Press) and explores the relationship between Japanese mother, Mitsuko, and her adopted, American son, Billy, as they face American internment during World War II.
Rubin also translated the "Thousand Years of Dreams" passages for use in the Japanese-produced Xbox 360 game Lost Odyssey.