Tsutomu Nagata’s interest in English started when his parents told him not to read a set of short stories they had in their home in Japan.

“They told me the stories were not good for children, so of course those were the first books I read,” he says, recalling “The Pit and the Pendulum” as among the first he got his hands on.

Nagata, a visiting assistant professor in Japanese, remained enthralled with American literature in his home country during his undergraduate years and finished his Ph.D. in English at Idaho State University in 2011. Both his dissertation and his current research are centered upon translating modern Japanese literature.

“The more difficult the story is to translate and the bigger the cultural differences between the languages, the more I enjoy it,” he says. “My hope is that my work is shared with the people who may appreciate and value it.”

At St. Lawrence, Nagata teaches courses on Japanese language, films and literature. “Many schools are being forced to make budget cuts and a lot of times foreign languages are the first to get chopped,” he says. “But St. Lawrence appreciates the languages and understands their importance and necessity for cultural growth.”

Nagata believes the liberal arts are important to a student’s overall development in the 21st century. “Things change and will keep changing and a liberal arts education prepares students for that,” he says. “Students here learn how to think and adapt and will know how to adjust when they need to in the future.”