[1] Pulvers took part in the Democratic National Convention, held in Los Angeles in 1960, where John F. Kennedy was nominated for the presidency.

Also, his father, Louis (1903–1993), had worked as a lighting technician at Warner Bros. during and after the war, bringing home piles of glossy enlargements of actors on set.

Pulvers was an undergraduate at UCLA, completing the four-year course in three years with a major in Political Science, summa cum laude.

In the Soviet Union he travelled extensively, visiting Moscow, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Yalta, Riga, Leningrad and Novgorod.

In September 1964 he entered the Russian Area Studies Program at Harvard University Graduate School, living on campus at Perkins Hall.

In September 1966, he went to Poland to do post-graduate work at Warsaw University on a scholarship from the National Students' Association (NSA) of the United States.

In the late autumn of 1967, after spending four weeks in Korea to change his visa, Pulvers took up a lectureship in Russian and Polish at Kyoto Sangyo University.

This was followed in August 1970 by the publication of a short play in Japanese translation, "The Perfect Crime of Mrs. Garigari", in the leading drama magazine, "Shingeki".

This was Pulvers' first published work about Japanese author and poet Miyazawa Kenji; and it prompted a long association with the Mainichi Daily News.

In the summer of 1982, Pulvers went to Rarotonga in the Cook Islands to be assistant to director Nagisa Oshima on the film "Merry Christmas, Mr.

In 2018 he was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon for his contribution to foreign language education in Japan and to promoting students' understanding of science and technology.

[2] Also in 2019 he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for his significant service to Japanese literature and culture as a writer, translator and educator.