Hiroji Kataoka (片岡弘次, born 1941) is a Japanese professor of Urdu at Daito Bunka University, where he also serves as dean of the Faculty of International Relations and director of the Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies.
[3] He entered the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies' Urdu department in 1964.
However, he was inspired to work harder after his professor, Takeshi Suzuki, assigned Krishan Chander's short story Sufaid Phool as class reading.
The story describes a young mute boy who had fallen in love with a girl but had no way to express his feelings to her except through glances and gestures, which echoed a situation Kataoka was facing in his personal life with a girl he liked but to whom he was too afraid to speak.
[3] In 2009, the Pakistani government announced that it would confer the civil decoration Sitara-i-Imtiaz upon Kataoka for his contributions in the field of education.