[1][2] He was a member of the generation of scholars who first brought Asian theater to English-speaking audiences in the postwar period, translating dozens of plays and directing many performances, some of which toured widely throughout the United States.
[1] It was with only two days left before his tour ended and he returned to the United States that he saw his first kabuki performance.
[1][3] After completing his PhD, he entered the United States Foreign Service, where he was a cultural affairs officer stationed in Jakarta, Indonesia from 1955 to 1957.
The Japanese government awarded him the Order of the Rising Sun, Golden Rays with Rosette, Imperial Decoration in 1994.
[4] In 1965, along with Andrew T. Tsubaki and Farley Richmond, he founded the Afro-Asian Theater Project, which after a series of reorganizations has been known since 1987 as the Association for Asian Performance.