Van Craig Gessel (born August 1, 1950, Compton, California) is a former Dean of the BYU College of Humanities at Brigham Young University.
[1] He also served as chair of the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages at BYU.
He has become renowned for his work as the primary translator for Japanese novelist Endo Shusaku.
[4] On April 29, 2018, Gessel was honored by the Emperor of Japan with the Order of the Rising Sun for his outstanding work in Japanese literature, promoting mutual understanding between the United States and Japan.
[6] As the primary translator for novelist Endo Shusaku Gessel has translated nine novels/story collections from Japanese to English and consulted on the adaptation film by Martin Scorsese, Silence.