Roy Starrs

Roy Starrs, M.A., PhD (University of British Columbia), now an honorary professor at the University of Otago in New Zealand, before his recent retirement taught Japanese and Asian Studies in Canada, the United States, Denmark, and New Zealand. He as published widely on Japanese topics, including books on the major novelists Yukio Mishima, Yasunari Kawabata, and Naoya Shiga, as well as studies of Japanese modernism, the relation between Japanese politics and religion, and cultural responses to the triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown that hit Japan in March, 2011. His most recent book is The Paradoxes of Japan’s Cultural Identity (Routledge, 2025). At present, he is working on a three-volume multidisciplinary comparative study of global cultural responses to disaster from ancient times to the present.