James Martin Holman, Jr. (born September 10, 1957 in

Louisville, Kentucky Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana borde ...

) is a literary translator, professor, puppeteer, and puppet theater director. He did his graduate work in Japanese literature at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. Holman lived in Japan for more than 14 years as a missionary, graduate student, professor of Japanese literature, and resident director of two study centers: the

Japan Center for Michigan Universities The (JCMU) is a study center operated by a consortium of the 15 public universities in the State of Michigan and the government of Shiga Prefecture in Japan. It is located on the shores of Lake Biwa, in the city of Hikone. Founded in 1989, JCMU o ...

(JCMU) in

Hikone 280px, Hikone City Hall is a city located in Shiga Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 111,958 in 49066 households and a population density of 570 persons per km². The total area of the city is . Geography Hikone i ...

and the Associated Kyoto Program Center (AKP) at

Doshisha University , mottoeng = Truth shall make you free , tagline = , established = Founded 1875,Chartered 1920 , vision = , type = Private , affiliation = , calendar = , endowment = €1 ...

Kyoto Kyoto (; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the ...

. He was the first non-Japanese to train and perform in Japan as a traditional puppeteer in the style of puppetry commonly known as

Bunraku (also known as ) is a form of traditional Japanese puppet theatre, founded in Osaka in the beginning of the 17th century, which is still performed in the modern day. Three kinds of performers take part in a performance: the or ( puppeteer ...

or ''ningyō jōruri'', making his stage debut in 1994 with the 170-year-old

Tonda Traditional Bunraku Puppet Troupe , founded in the 1830s, is one of the most active groups performing traditional ''ningyō jōruri'' or Bunraku puppetry in Japan, and has been officially designated an Intangible Cultural Treasure. Based in the northern part of the city of Naga ...

Shiga Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Shiga Prefecture has a population of 1,412,916 (1 October 2015) and has a geographic area of . Shiga Prefecture borders Fukui Prefecture to the north, Gifu Prefecture to the north ...

. He is the founding director of the

Bunraku Bay Puppet Troupe {{Short description, American puppet troupe Bunraku Bay Puppet Troupe (known since 2011 as "Bunraku Bay Puppet Theater") is an American puppet troupe that performs the traditional Japanese puppet drama commonly known as ''ningyō jōruri '' or Bun ...

, based in Columbia, Missouri, which performs traditional Japanese puppet theater in the United States. In 2017, the film "Kaiju Bunraku" debuted at the

Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,6 ...

, featuring the puppetry of Holman's Bunraku Bay Puppet Theater. Holman has also published many translations of modern Japanese and Korean literature, including ''

The Old Capital is a novel by Japanese writer Yasunari Kawabata first published in 1962. It was one of three novels cited by the Nobel Committee in their decision to award Kawabata the 1968 Nobel Prize in Literature. ''The Old Capital'' was first translated ...

'' (1987), '' Palm-of-the-Hand Stories'' (1988), and ''

The Dancing Girl of Izu is a novel by Japanese writer and Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata first published in 1926. Plot The narrator, a twenty-year-old student from Tokyo, travels the Izu Peninsula during the last days of the summer holidays, a journey which h ...

'' (1998), by Nobel Prize-winning Japanese author

Yasunari Kawabata was a Japanese novelist and short story writer whose spare, lyrical, subtly shaded prose works won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968, the first Japanese author to receive the award. His works have enjoyed broad international appeal a ...

; ''The Book of Masks'' (1989) and ''Shadows of Sound'' (1990), by

Korea Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republi ...

n writer Hwang Sun-wŏn; and ''The House of Twilight'' by Korean author

Yun Heung-gil Yun Heunggil (born 14 December 1942) is a South Korean novelist known for his treatment of conflicts between the individual and society. He received his degree in Korean literature from Wonkwang University in 1973. In 1977 he won the Korean ...

. Holman has taught Japanese language, literature, and theater and Korean literature at colleges and universities in Japan, the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

, and

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tota ...

. From 2005 until 2017, Holman taught Japanese language, Japanese and Korean Literature, and Japanese theater, as Teaching Professor and Coordinator of the Japanese Studies Program at the

University of Missouri The University of Missouri (Mizzou, MU, or Missouri) is a public land-grant research university in Columbia, Missouri. It is Missouri's largest university and the flagship of the four-campus University of Missouri System. MU was founded ...

. In 2019 he moved to the city of

Tokushima is a prefecture of Japan located on the island of Shikoku. Tokushima Prefecture has a population of 728,633 (1 October 2019) and has a geographic area of 4,146 km2 (1,601 sq mi). Tokushima Prefecture borders Kagawa Prefecture to the north, ...

in Japan, where currently lives and where he founded the troupe, Tokubeiza, which performs traditional Japanese puppet theater.

Works translated

*Hwang Sun-won. ''Shadows of Sound''. Mercury House, 1989. *Hwang Sun-won. ''Book of Masks''. *Kawabata Yasunari. ''The Old Capital''. North Point, 1987. . Revised edition—Counterpoint, 2006. . *Kawabata Yasunari. ''Palm-of-the-Hand Stories''. North Point, 1988. Repr. by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, *Kawabata Yasunari. ''The Dancing Girl of Izu and Other Stories''. Counterpoint, 1997. *Yun Heung-gil. ''The House of Twilight''.

References

http://grs.missouri.edu/people/holman.html

External links

Bunraku Bay Puppet Troupe
{{DEFAULTSORT:Holman, J. Martin People from Louisville, Kentucky Japanese–English translators Korean–English translators American puppeteers Japanese literature academics University of California, Berkeley alumni University of Missouri faculty Living people 1957 births