Donald M Richardson

[Chris Kern]

Dear list members,

Does anyone have any information about Donald M Richardson, who has made English translations of a large amount of Japanese waka? His translations include the seven anthologies from the Gosenshu through the Shin kokinshu, as well as Sankashu, and perhaps others. I was aware of the existence of these books for a while but I finally saw them in person last week at UC Berkeley. They appear to be self-published, and possibly self-printed -- there is only a year given for the copyright, and they seem to be printed on regular paper and (possibly) self-bound. They contain only a brief introduction and scattered annotation; I didn't do a detailed read or comparison to see what the quality of the translations was.

Copies of these translations are held by several libraries (at least Berkeley, Duke, and Chicago).

Does anyone have any more information on Mr. Richardson? That's a pretty significant body of translations. He also seems to be the author of a book about his time in the army language school during WW2.

Sincerely,

-Chris Kern, Auburn

[Mostow, Joshua Scott]

Dear Chris,

If memory serves, Mr. Richardson was a retired CIA agent, living in Virginia (?) who undertook a massive amount of translating—mostly Edo-period popular texts, I had thought. At some point he approached North American research libraries and offered copies (pre-PDF days) of all of them. I think we were simply required to bind them. In any event, the ones I have consulted (Edo-period) are uneven. BTW, he did Inaka Genji twice: once just the text, and once with the pictures included. I have never seen the latter.

Cheers,

Joshua

On Jul 29, 2025, at 9:16 AM, Chris Kern <chris...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Jack Stoneman]

Joshua is correct. Retired CIA agent living in Virginia. Born in 1923 I think. He also translated some Yokai related texts. Also fudoki and some Edo fiction. Unfortunately, I have found none of his translations to be reliable.

On Jul 29, 2025, at 12:18 PM, Mostow, Joshua Scott <Joshua...@ubc.ca> wrote:

 Dear Chris,

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