Ian Buruma

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

He was born in The Hague, the Netherlands, to a Dutch father and British 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 been noted as a "well-regarded European intellectual." by Peter Collier

In 2000 he delivered the Huizinga Lecture – Neoromanticism of writers in exile – in the Pieterskerk in Leiden, The Netherlands. 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, USA.

In 2008 Buruma was awarded the Erasmus Prize, which is awarded to an individual who has made "an especially important contribution to culture, society or social science in Europe."

He is among the 100 top global thinkers of 2010, as selected by the Foreign Policy magazine. His contribution as a public intellectual, according to the magazine, is as follows:

Works

• The Japanese Tattoo (1980) with Donald Richie ISBN 978-0-8348-0228-5
• Behind...... ...
...

Read More