Dr. Hisaaki Yamanouchi

Hisaaki Yamanouchi studied at the University of Tokyo, Columbia University, the University of Toronto, and the University of Cambridge. His Cambridge Ph.D. dissertation (1975) was entitled 'The Mind's Abyss: A Study of Melancholy and Associated States in Some Late Eighteenth-Century Writers, and in Wordsworth and Coleridge'. While in Cambridge, he also taught in the Faculty of Oriental Studies as Lector in Japanese (1968-73, succeeded by his wife Reiko 1973-76). The series of lectures he delivered in Cambridge during 1975 was later published as The Search for Authenticity in Modern Japanese Literature (Cambridge University Press, 1978).

After his retirement in 1995 from the University of Tokyo, he taught at Japan Women's University and then at the University of the Air. The TV series he was in charge of producing for the University of the Air included 'British Culture and Society' and 'Images of Japan: Japanese Culture as Perceived by the West'. The latter contained programmes on Ernest Satow, Lafcadio Hearn, Arthur Waley, and others. Among the speaker's publications is a bilingual edition of William Wordsworth's poems (Iwanami Bunko, 1998). He translated into English from the Japanese original "Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself" (Kodansha International, 1996), Oe's Nobel Laureate speech given in Stockholm.

Since April 2006 Prof. Yamanouchi has taken up the post of Vice-President at Ryotokuji University, newly founded in Shin Urayasu, which aims to promote Japanese arts as one of its specialist areas.

Prof. Yamanouchi addressed the Society once before, in a joint meeting with the International House of Japan in October 2000. At that time he gave a paper on Oe Kenzaburo's new novel Somersault, which at that time had not yet been translated into English. An unusual feature was that Oe was himself present at the meeting and after the presentation made extensive comments.

Lectures available: 2000-10, 2006-05