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Hiroaki Sato 佐藤紘彰 (b. 1942) is a Japanese poet and prolific translator who writes frequently for ''The Japan Times''. He has been called (by Gary Snyder) ''perhaps the finest translator of contemporary Japanese poetry into American English.''

Life

The son of a police officer, he was born on Taiwan in 1942. The family fled back to Japan at the end of the War and encountered a number of hardships, including living in a stable. He was educated at Doshisha University in Kyoto, His first job was at the New York branch of the official trade agency, JETRO, from April 1969; meanwhile he was translating art books and catalogues anonymously for Weatherhill. The first work to appear under his own name was a small collection of poems by Princess Shikishi. and his translations were soon published by the ''Chicago Review''.

Sato was a president of the Haiku Society of America from 1979 to 1981 (and honorary curator in 2006-7). He was a professor of Japanese literature at St. Andrews Presbyterian College in North Carolina from 1985 to 1991, and then director of research and planning at JETRO New York. Since 1998 he has been an adjunct at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He lives in New York City.

Selected works