Donald Richie

Though white and Ohio-born, Donald Richie has been one of the most articulate and passionate boosters of Japanese culture in the West since the 1950s. He first went to Japan in 1946 as a civilian clerk-typist for the US government during the Occupation. Richie returned stateside in 1949 to complete his degree in English at Columbia University before setting up permanent residency in Japan in 1953. Over the course of the next four decades, Richie firmly established himself as the leading Western authority on Japanese cinema, penning several landmark books on the industry and some of its most illustrious practitioners (e.g., Akira Kurosawa; Yasujiro Ozu). He has also written English subtitles, curated exhibits and designed and programmed several major American retrospectives of Japanese films. Additionally, Richie has directed, scripted, photographed and scored dozens of "personal" films of his own--working in experimental, animated and documentary forms. (Several are feature-length.)