Royall Tyler

Royall Tyler (b. 1936), former Professor and Head of the Japan Centre, Faculty of Asian Studies, Australian National University, studied at Columbia University, USA, where he received an MA in Japanese history in1966 and a PhD in Japanese literature in1977. Subsequently, he taught Japanese literature at Ohio State University, the University of Wisconsin at Madison and the University of Oslo. He began teaching at the Australian National University in 1990 and served as a Reader (Professor) in the Japan Centre, Faculty of Asian Studies, from 1992 until his retirement in 2000. Tyler is credited with introducing non-Japanese audiences to the Noh theater through his highly acclaimed translations and publications of numerous Noh plays, and in 2001 he completed translating the entire Tale of Genji, a task that took approximately eight years. The translation was awarded the Japan-US Friendship Commission Translation Prize in 2001. His other translations include an anthology of medieval setsuwa stories, Japanese Tales (1987). Tyler continues to lecture at symposiums and seminars around the world, while running an alpaca farm near Braidwood, NSW with his wife.