Jay Rubin

Jay Rubin (b. 1941) is an American academic, translator, and (as of 2015) novelist. He is best known for his translations of the works of the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami. He has written about Murakami, the novelist Natsume Soseki (1867-1916), the short story writers Kunikida Doppo (1871-1908) and Akutagawa Ryunosuke (1892-1927), prewar Japanese literary censorship, Noh drama, and Japanese grammar. In May 2015 Chin Music Press published his novel THE SUN GODS, set in Seattle against the background of the incarceration of 120,000 U.S. citizens and non-citizens of Japanese ancestry during World War II.

Rubin 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 to Harvard University, from which he retired in 2006. He lives near Seattle, where he continues to write and translate.