Robin D. Gill

Robin Dallas Gill, born in 1951 at Miami Beach, Florida, USA, and brought up on the island of Key Biscayne in the Florida Keys, is a bilingual author in Japanese and English.

He first wrote extensively on stereotypes of Japanese identity[1] before moving on to publishing his research on (as well as translations of) Japanese poetry, especially the genres of haiku and senryū. Since 2013, he has been engaged in writing in Japanese for a Japanese audience, hoping to help, via introductions to the comic traditions of Japanese poetry, to shake Japan out of its "cultural doldrums".[2] Much of his output has, according to Gill's own testimony, been done while a pauper for much of his life.[3]

He is considered a 'maverick' writer within the field of Western studies on Edo-period poetry.[4] He writes haiku in Japanese under the haigō (haikai pen-name) Keigu (敬愚:'Yours foolishly', an homophonous pun on 敬具:'Yours truly').[5][6]

  1. ^ Sugimoto & Mouer 1989, p. 2.
  2. ^ Wilson & Gill 2013.
  3. ^ Kern 2009, p. 35.
  4. ^ Kern 2009, p. 22.
  5. ^ Rohlich 2005, p. 372.
  6. ^ Kern 2009, p. 24:'Or, more literally, "Your respectful fool" and "Your respectful tool," respectively.