Ian Buruma

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Ian Buruma

Ian Buruma talks with an attendee at the 2006 Texas Book Festival.
Born December 28, 1951 (1951-12-28) (age 56)
The Hague, Netherlands
Occupation Writer, Lecturer
Nationality Dutch
Genres Non-fiction
Subjects Japan, Occidentalism, Orientalism
Official website

Ian Buruma (born December 28, 1951) is an Anglo-Dutch writer and academic. Much of his work focuses on Asian culture, particularly that of 20th-century Japan.

He was born in The Hague, the Netherlands, to a Dutch father and English mother. He studied Chinese literature at Leiden University, and then Japanese film at Nihon University in Tokyo. He has held a number of editorial and academic positions, and has contributed numerous articles to the New York Review of Books.

He has held fellowships at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C and St Antony's College, Oxford. In 2003 he became Luce Professor of Democracy, Human Rights & Journalism at Bard College, New York.

Since 2005 he has resided in New York.

[edit] Works

  • The Japanese Tattoo (1980) with Donald Richie
  • Behind the Mask: On Sexual Demons, Sacred Mothers, Transvestites, Gangsters, Drifters, and Other Japanese Cultural Heroes (1983)
  • Tokyo: Form and Spirit (1986) with James R. Brandon, Kenneth Frampton, Martin Friedman, Donald Richie
  • God's Dust: A Modern Asian Journey (1989)
  • Great Cities of the World: Hong Kong (1991)
  • Playing the Game (1991) novel
  • The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and in Japan (1994)
  • Geisha: The Life, the Voices, the Art (1998) with Jodi Cobb
  • Voltaire's Coconuts, or Anglomania in Europe (UK title) (1998) or Anglomania: a European Love Affair (US title) (1999)
  • The Missionary and the Libertine: Love and War in East and West (2000)
  • Bad Elements: Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing (2001)
  • Inventing Japan: From Empire to Economic Miracle 1853-1964 (2003)
  • Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies (2004) with Avishai Margalit
  • Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance (2006)

[edit] External links