He has been called (by Gary Snyder) "perhaps the finest translator of contemporary Japanese poetry into American English".
Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature in 1999 for his translation of Breeze Through Bamboo by Ema Saikō (Columbia University Press, 1997) and in 2017 for The Silver Spoon: Memoir of a Boyhood in Japan by Kansuke Naka (Stone Bridge Press, 2015).
The family fled back to Japan at the end of WWII and encountered a number of hardships, including living in a stable.
[6] His first job was at the New York branch of the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO), from April 1969;[5] meanwhile he was translating art books and catalogs anonymously for Weatherhill.
[4] He was a professor of Japanese literature at St. Andrews Presbyterian College in North Carolina from 1985 to 1991, and then director of research and planning at JETRO New York.