E. Dale Saunders

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E. Dale Saunders (1919-1995) was an American scholar of Romance languages and literature, Japanese Buddhism, Classical Japanese Literature, and East Asian Civilisation.

Saunders obtained an A.B. degree from Western Reserve University in 1941 and an M.A. in Romance Philology from Harvard in 1942. He continued his studies in Japanese after joining the U.S. Naval Reserve, later earning an M.A. from Harvard in 1948 and the Doctorat de l'Université de Paris in 1953.

Saunders was a teaching fellow in Romance Languages and Literature at Harvard in 1942 and again in 1945-48. After working as instructor in French at Boston University (1946), Chargé de mission, titre étranger in the Musée Guimet in Paris (1950), Lecturer at the University of Paris (1951-52), and Assistant Professor at the International Christian University in Tokyo (1954-55), Saunders joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania in 1955 as assistant professor. He became associate professor in 1963 and full professor in 1968.

In addition to his contributions to scholarship, Saunders is known for his translations of modern Japanese literature, including a number of works by Abe Kōbō.

His translations into English include:

Inter Ice Age 4 by Abe Kōbō
The Woman in the Dunes by Abe Kōbō
The Face of Another by Abe Kōbō
The Ruined Map by Abe Kōbō
The Box Man by Abe Kōbō
The Temple of Dawn by Mishima Yukio (from the Sea of Fertility series, translated in conjunction with Cecilia Segawa Seigle)

Saunders also translated books into French:

Histoire de la littérature japonaise, tome 1 : Des origines au théâtre no by Katō Shūichi
Histoire de la littérature japonaise, tome 2 : L'Isolement du XVIIe au XIXe siècle by Katō Shūichi
Histoire de la littérature japonaise, tome 3 : L'époque moderne by Katō Shūichi
Le jeu de l'indulgence : Etude de psychologie fondée sur le concept japonais d'amae by Doi Takeo

He also authored several books: