"How Japan Can Save the World" with Roger Pulvers

Roger Pulvers is a former academic, and an author, playwright, theater director, translator and journalist. In a recently published memoir If There Were No Japan, he argues that Japan has everything it needs for an optimistic future.

Based on 50 years experience of living in Japan, Roger will discuss his view that Japan is already reinventing its identity, and that diplomatically, it holds a unique position as a secular democracy in the region.

Roger has published more than forty books in Japanese and English, including novels such as The Death of Urashima Taro, General Yamashita’s Treasure, The Honey and the Fires and The Dream of Lafcadio Hearn. His most recent novel, Starsand (2015), was written in Japanese and is published by Kodansha.

Roger received the Kenji Miyazawa Prize in 2008 and the Noma Award for the Translation of Japanese Literature in 2013. Over the past forty-five years he has translated prose, drama and poetry from Japanese, Russian and Polish.

He has also worked in film and television, including as assistant to director Nagisa Oshima in Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, and as host of NHK's Gift E-meigen no Sekai.

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