Edwin McClellan

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Edwin McClellan (1925- ) is a British academic and renowned translator of Japanese literature.

McClellan was born in Kobe, Japan, to a Japanese mother and a British father. In 1942, during World War II, McClellan returned to Britain and joined the Royal Air Force before being sent to Washington, D.C., as a liaison officer. He returned to the United Kingdom to attend St Andrews University and then moved to the University of Chicago as a doctoral student, becoming a professor there in 1957. He went to Yale in 1972 where he served as chairman of the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures from 1973-82 and from 1988-91.

McClellan served as director-at-large of the American Oriental Society and as a consultant for the National Endowment for the Humanities. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1979 and was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, by the Japanese government in 1998.

His publications include:

• Two Japanese Novelists: Soseki and Toson
• Woman in the Crested Kimono : The Life of Shibue Io and Her Family Drawn from Mori Ogai's 'Shibue Chusai'

McClellan has translated:

• Kokoro by Natsume Soseki
• Grass on the Wayside by Natsume Soseki
• A Dark Night's Passing by Shiga Naoya
• Fragments of a Past by Eiji Yoshikawa (memoirs)