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Shuichi KATO
Literay critic, author and medical doctor, Kato Shuichi was
born in Tokyo in 1919. He was graduated from the Tokyo University
Medical School in 1943, and received an M.D. from the same
University in 1950, specializing in hematology. Kato has had a
distinguished career as a critic and commentator on Japanese
culture, literature and arts; he is a noted literary figure in
his own right; and he as contributed to deepening understanding
of Japanese culture world-wdie through his teaching and writing.
In recognition of his outstanding achievements, he has received
the order of the Officer des Arts des Lettres from the French
Government in March 1993 for his history of Japanese literature,
Nihon bunkagaku shi josetsu (1975), and in Japan he has received
the prestigious Asahi Prize in January 1994 for his contribution
to post-war Japanese culture.
He is internationally known for his work on Japanese art, society
and literature, which have been published into several languages
including Chinese, Italian, German, French and English. His most
prominent works in English include Form, Style, Tradition:
Reflections on Japanese Arts and Society (1971), the three volume
A History of Japanese Literature (1970), and Japan: Spirit and
Form (1984). TOP Further Details Kato (b.
1919) is one of postwar Japan's most cosmopolitan literary
critics and involved political essayists.... Kato's patrician
grandfather owned an Italian restaurant in Tokyo, his doctor
father and gentle mother gave him a thoughtfully critical base in
traditional Japanese culture, his education made him both a lover
of Japan and a Marxist opponent of the Japanese establishment,
and his literary translations and studies of European literature
after the war made him a Third World intellectual who led
demonstrations against the U.S.-Japan security treaty. Kato's
gentle writerly skill with personalities and events allows him to
put these seemingly contradictory elements together in a way that
expands our understanding. Source:
Hayford, Charles. et al, "Book Reviews: Social
Sciences" Library Journal, May 1, 1999, v.124, issue 8,
p.88. GENRES:
Art / Art history, Literary criticism and history. CAREER:
Professor of Asian Studies, University of British
Columbia, Vancouver, 1960-69
Professor of Japanology, Freie Universitaet, Berlin, 1969-73
Professor of Japanese Studies, Sophia University, Tokyo, 1976-85
Visiting Lecturer, Yale University, New Haven, Conn., 1974-76
Visiting Professor, Cambridge University, 1983
Universita degli Studio di Venezia, 1983-84
Tokyo Metropolitan Central Library, general director, currently.
PUBLICATIONS: Hitsuji No Uta (Song of a Sheep), 1968
Form, Style, Tradition: Reflexions on Japanese Art and Society,
1971
Genso Bara Toshi (Roses and Cities), 1973, 1974
The Japan-China Phenonmenon, 1974
Six Lives Six Death; Portraits from Modern Japan, 1979
A History of Japanese Literature, 3 vols., 1979-83
Chosakushu (Collected Works) in 15 vols., 1978-79
Source:
Ferrara, Miranda H., ed., The Writers Directory 1996-98, 12th Ed.
New York: St. James Press, 1996.
