Education
Stanford University; University of Arizona. University of California, Berkeley.
Stanford University; University of Arizona. University of California, Berkeley.
His primary research interest is the classical literature of Japan, especially traditional poetic forms. He received his Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Arizona in Tucson in 1954. He served four years in the Navy and then began graduate study in 1958 at the University of California at Berkeley.
In 1962 he transferred to Stanford University and in 1966 earned a Doctor of Philosophy there in Japanese literature.
He entered the Harvard faculty in 1965. Cranston"s career has centered around the translation and writing of poetry.
His dissertation, a translation of and commentary on the Izumi Shikibu diary, was published in 1969 in the Harvard-Yenching Monograph series as The Izumi Shikibu Diary: A Romance of the Heian Court and remains the authoritative English version. In 1993, Stanford University Press released the first of his proposed six-volume anthology of classical Japanese poetry.
In 2009, he was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, by the government of Japan.
Cranston has also translated the work of poet Mizuno Ruriko.