Early Life
Ishikawa was born in the Asakusa district of Tokyo as the son of a banker. He graduated from the Tokyo School of Foreign Languages (東京外国語学校, later Tokyo University of Foreign Studies) with a degree in French literature. After graduation, he served a tour of duty in the Imperial Japanese Navy from 1922–1923, following which he was hired by Fukuoka University as a professor of French literature. His early career involved translating works such as Anatole France’s Les lilies rouges and Nobel Prize-winning author André Gide’s L'Immoraliste into Japanese.
The next year, he was resigned from the university due to controversy over his participation in student protest movements. He returned to Tokyo and began a bohemian existence, living out of cheap pensions while translating Andre Gide's Les Caves du Vatican and Molière's Le Misanthrope and Tartuffe.
Read more about this topic: Jun Ishikawa (author)
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