Jeffrey Angles (1971- ) is a professor of Japanese literature and translation at Western Michigan University. His lifelong interest in Japan and Japanese literature began when he went to Yamaguchi Prefecture in southwestern Japan as a fifteen-year old. Since then, he has lived and taught in Japan numerous times, spending many years working and studying in various cities, including Saitama, Kobe, Kyoto, and Tokyo. Dr. Angles has written a great deal about contemporary Japanese literature and culture. He is also an accomplished translator of Japanese modernist literature and poetry. His translations of Tada Chimako won both the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission for the Translation of Japanese Literature and the Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets. His translations of Takahashi Mutsuo have won major grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and PEN Club of America.