Anthony H. Chambers Collection

Anthony Chambers is a Professor Emeritus of Japanese and Japanese Literature at Arizona State University. Chambers attended undergraduate school at Pomona College in California. Following his undergraduate degree, Chambers continued graduate studies at the International Christian University (Tokyo), Stanford University, and the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Study (Tokyo) before finally arriving at the University of Michigan for his PhD. While in Anne Arbor, Chambers was under the tutelage of Professor Edward Seidensticker. Seidensticker was a graduate of the US Navy Japanese Language School at the University of Colorado Boulder in 1942 and became a world renowned Japanologist and translator of Japanese literature.

After receiving his doctorate, Chambers took a position at Arizona State University in 1971 where he was the first professor of Japanese literature. In 1975 Chambers moved to Wesleyan University in Middletown Connecticut where he chaired the Department of Asian Languages. Under the position, Chambers frequently invited Seidensticker to gives talks on the campus. In 1988 Chambers returned to ASU where he is currently Professor Emeritus of Japanese in the School of International Letters and Cultures. He has also taught at the Associated Kyoto Program and the Kyoto Center (now the Kyoto Consortium) for Japanese Studies.

Chambers is particularly noted for his studies of the novelist Tanizaki Jun'ichiro (1886-1965), including 'The Secret Window: Ideal Worlds in Tanizaki's Fiction' (Harvard, 1994); for his translations of Tanizaki's fiction, including 'Naomi' and 'The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi' (Knopf, 1985 and 1982); and studies and translations of several classical masterpieces, including Ueda Akinari's 1776 collection of gothic stories, 'Tales of Moonlight and Rain' (Columbia, 2007), for which he received the 2007 Japan-United States Friendship Commission Prize for the outstanding translation of classical Japanese literature.