Japanese Government honours Mr Roger Pulvers

On Wednesday 23 January 2019, Ambassador Tsuruoka bestowed the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon upon Mr Roger Pulvers, an Australian citizen residing in the UK, in recognition of his outstanding contribution to foreign language education in Japan and to promoting students’ understanding of science and technology.

Mr Pulvers has published more than 50 works, including If There Were No Japan: A Cultural Memoir, which was released in both English and Japanese, and novels set in Japan, such as The Death of Urashima Taro and The Dream of Lafcadio Hearn, in addition to translations, plays, and books about the Japanese language.  Furthermore, he has had an outstanding career in stage directing, as well as in film production, working as assistant to director Nagisa Oshima’s on the epic film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence.  More recently, he was author, scriptwriter and director of the film Star Sand – Hoshizuna Monogatari, a Japanese-Australian co-production released in 2017.

Mr Pulvers is a keen admirer of such authors as Kenji Miyazawa, Takuboku Ishikawa and Hisashi Inoue, and has translated their books into English to introduce them to a wider audience. Meanwhile, in 2013, when the tourist train “SL Ginga” was launched in Iwate Prefecture, which Mr Pulvers calls his second home, he provided the information in the train on Miyazawa and his works as a means of supporting the reconstruction of the area affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake through tourism.

Furthermore, for more than fifty years Mr Pulvers has been engaged in language and liberal arts education by teaching at Kyoto Sangyo University, Kyoto University of Arts and Design, Tokyo Institute of Technology and the Australian National University.  During his tenure at Tokyo Institute of Technology, where he was awarded the title of Professor Emeritus, he applied his acclaimed international perspective and his broad-based knowledge.  He also served as the founding director of the Center for the Study of World Civilizations at the university.

Through his wealth of experience and powerful insights, Mr Pulvers has made an enormous contribution to the promotion of a deeper understanding of Japan and its people, arts and culture among a wide range of people around the world.

In his speech, Ambassador Tsuruoka said we were lucky that Mr Pulvers had encountered Japan and hoped that he would continue to make available his personal insights gained through many years of studying the country. In expressing his appreciation for this honour, Mr Pulvers declared himself to be ‘moved beyond words’ (kanmuryo [感無量], as he put it, most appropriately, in Japanese).