Teaches courses in modern Japanese literature.

Research interests include the writings of Shimao Toshio, Christianity and Japanese literature, and contemporary fiction. He is the author of Mad Wives and Island Dreams: Shimao Toshio and the Margins of Japanese Literature (1999), Spirit Matters: The Transcendent in Modern Japanese Literature (2006), and is co-editor of the anthology Oe and Beyond: Fiction in Contemporary Japan (1999).

He has also published translations of three novels, one short story collection, and two works of non-fiction by Murakami Haruki, as well as short stories of Murakami’s in The New Yorker, Harper’s, and elsewhere. His translations also include novels by Shimada Masahiko, Kuroi Senji, Yoshimura Akira, and Oe Kenzaburo.

His translation of Kuroi’s novel Life in the Cul-de-sac won the 2001 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the translation of Japanese Literature, and in 2006 he was awarded the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize for his translation of Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore, a book which was selected by The New York Times as one of the Ten Best Books of 2005. His most recent publications include a co-translation of Murakami’s short stories entitled Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, and translations of a book of essays by Murakami, the novel Real World by Kirino Natsuo, and the novel Villain (original title: Akunin) by Yoshida Shuichi. He has recently completed translations of two more novels by Kirino Natsuo, a novel by Tatematsu Wahei, and Murakami Haruki's 1Q84 (Book 3). He is presently translating a second novel by Yoshida Shuichi entitled Parade, and researching the work of the Christian novelist Miura Ayako.