He did his graduate work in Japanese literature at the University of California, Berkeley.
Holman lived in Japan for more than 14 years as a missionary, graduate student, professor of Japanese literature, and resident director of two study centers: the Japan Center for Michigan Universities (JCMU) in Hikone and the Associated Kyoto Program Center (AKP) at Doshisha University in Kyoto.
He was the first non-Japanese to train and perform in Japan as a traditional puppeteer in the style of puppetry commonly known as Bunraku or ningyō jōruri, making his stage debut in 1994 with the 170-year-old Tonda Traditional Bunraku Puppet Troupe in Shiga Prefecture.
Holman has also published many translations of modern Japanese and Korean literature, including The Old Capital (1987), Palm-of-the-Hand Stories (1988), and The Dancing Girl of Izu (1998), by Nobel Prize-winning Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata; The Book of Masks (1989) and Shadows of Sound (1990), by Korean writer Hwang Sun-wŏn; and The House of Twilight by Korean author Yun Heung-gil.
In 2019 he moved to the city of Tokushima in Japan, where currently lives and where he founded the troupe, Tokubeiza, which performs traditional Japanese puppet theater.