Edwin McClellan

Edwin McClellan (24 October 1925 – 27 April 2009) was a British Japanologist, teacher, writer, translator and interpreter of Japanese literature and culture.

Two years later, McClellan transferred to the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago to work with classicist David Grene and economist and philosopher Friedrich von Hayek.

McClellan appealed to Hayek to write his doctoral dissertation on the novelist Natsume Sōseki, whose work was much admired in Japan but unknown in the West.

Awarded his doctorate in 1957, McClellan taught English at Chicago until 1959 when he was asked to create a program in Japanese studies, housed in the university's Oriental Institute.

His publications include translations of novels by Natsume Sōseki (in addition to Kokoro, Grass on the Wayside) and Shiga Naoya (A Dark Night's Passing); the translation of a memoir by Yoshikawa Eiji; a book of essays, Two Japanese Novelists: Soseki and Toson; and a biography of 19th-century Japanese "bluestocking" Shibue Io, Woman in a Crested Kimono.

The depth and breadth of readings these seminars required were a revolution in pedagogy when McClellan first began them over 20 years ago; and they continue to represent an ideal of graduate training in the field.

[2] The 16 critical essays and selected modern period translations were compiled to demonstrate the high standards set by Professor McClellan.