Edward Seidensticker

Edward G. Seidensticker
Edward G. Seidensticker, Fall 2006
Born	February 11, 1921 Castle Rock, Colorado
Died	August 26, 2007 (age 86) Tokyo, Japan
Occupation	Translator of Japanese Literature; Writer; Author
Nationality	American
Period	1950–2006

Edward George Seidensticker (February 11, 1921 – August 26, 2007) was a noted post-World War II scholar, historian, and preeminent translator of classical and contemporary Japanese literature. His English translation of the epic The Tale of Genji, published in 1976, was especially well received critically and is counted among the preferred modern translations.

Seidensticker is closely associated with the work of three major 20th Century Japanese writers—Yasunari Kawabata, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, and Yukio Mishima. His landmark translations of the novels of Yasunari Kawabata, in particular Snow County (1956) and Thousand Cranes (1958), led, in part, to Kawabata being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968.

Seidensticker was born in 1921 on an isolated farmstead near Castle Rock, Colorado. His father, also named Edward G. Seidensticker, was the owner of a modest ranch which struggled financially during the 1920s and early 1930s; his mother, Mary E. Seidensticker (née Dillon), was a homemaker. Seidensticker was raised Catholic and is of German, English and Irish heritage. By high school, cognizant that he was neither athletic nor mechanically adept, he began to slip away during spare time to read Dickens and Thackeray, among others. He found Tolstoy most to his liking, the works of Mark Twain, the least. He was only one of two in his graduating class at Douglas County High School to go off to college, the other being his older brother William.

Seidensticker desired to attend an East Coast university, but because of his family's financial situation, he grudgingly enrolled in the University of Colorado at Boulder. It was assumed he would study law, following in the footsteps of his grandfather and several uncles, but he chose the field of economics then switched to English, a choice that displeased his family. In June 1942, he was graduated with a degree in English.