Faubion Bowers

Trained as a concert pianist, Faubion Bowers switched careers in 1940 and traveled to Japan, where he taught at Hosei University in Tokyo. He left Japan in 1941 and became a lecturer at several universities in Java, then returned to the U.S. Fluent in Japanese, during World War II he served in the US Army's Military Intelligence division as a Japanese interpreter, and in 1945 he was assigned as an aide to Gen. Douglas MacArthur, head of the American occupation of Japan (one of his assignments was as a censor of Japanese theater productions). After the war he wrote several books on dance and drama in the Far East and was regarded as an expert on Japanese kabuki theater.