Jun Ishikawa (石川淳, Ishikawa Jun, 7 March 1899 - 29 December 1987) was the pen-name of a modernist author, translator and literary critic active in Showa period Japan. His real name (written in the same kanji) was Ishikawa Kiyoshi.
Ishikawa was born in the Asakusa district of Tokyo as the son of a banker. He graduated from the Tokyo School of Foreign Languages (東京外国語学校, later Tokyo University of Foreign Studies) with a degree in French literature....
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Jun Ishikawa (石川淳, Ishikawa Jun, 7 March 1899 - 29 December 1987) was the pen-name of a modernist author, translator and literary critic active in Showa period Japan. His real name (written in the same kanji) was Ishikawa Kiyoshi.
Ishikawa was born in the Asakusa district of Tokyo as the son of a banker. He graduated from the Tokyo School of Foreign Languages (東京外国語学校, later Tokyo University of Foreign Studies) with a degree in French literature. After graduation, he served a tour of duty in the Imperial Japanese Navy from 1922-1923, following which he was hired by Fukuoka University as a professor of French literature. His early career involved translating works such as Anatole France’s Les lilies rouges and Nobel Prize-winning author André Gide’s L'Immoraliste into Japanese.
The next year, he was resigned from the university due to controversy over his participation in student protest movements. He returned to Tokyo and began a bohemian existence, living out of cheap pensions while...
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