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Searching for Levy Hideo

Summarizing Bob Davis in Moment · Published Tuesday, May 13, 2025
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JL;DR SUMMARY The article explores the unique life journey of Ian Levy, also known as Levy Hideo, an American Jew who became a celebrated Japanese novelist. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

Identity  Jewish Diaspora  Jewish Heritage  Multilingualism  Ian Levy  Levy Hideo  Japanese Literature  Howie Levy  Tokyo Novelist  Border Crossing Literature 

Places mentioned

Washington DC, United States
"A suburban Washington, DC, teenager with a troubled past, Ian became Levy Hideoor Ribi Hideo as his name is sometimes transliterated in scholarly studiesa celebrated Tokyo novelist who writes in Japanese and says its now difficult for him to speak in English."
Tokyo, Japan
"A suburban Washington, DC, teenager with a troubled past, Ian became Levy Hideoor Ribi Hideo as his name is sometimes transliterated in scholarly studiesa celebrated Tokyo novelist who writes in Japanese and says its now difficult for him to speak in English."
Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan
"He only wound up living in Japan in the 1960s and 1970s when he spent a dozen years in Yokohama running the State Departments Foreign Service Institute, which teaches advanced Japanese."
Taiwan
"He later joined the State Department in 1947 and was posted first in Taiwan."
Arlington, Virginia, United States
"Ian and Virginia moved first to Hong Kong and then to Arlington, VA, just outside of Washington, DC."
Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan
"Alienated from the United States like many of his generation who were soured by the Kennedy assassination and the Vietnam war, Hideo tasted the freedom of the 1960s in Tokyo. He roamed the bustling Shinjuku neighborhood, fascinated with the glittery nightlife and an assortment of street characters he had never encountered in the D.C. suburbs."
Kaifeng, Henan, China
"In The Star-Spangled Banner, the Hideo character, Ben Isaac, rejects his nationality, language and even his sexuality to live in a new culture and language. He swoons over his friend Andos muscular body and lets Ando put his hand on his as he teaches Ben to write Japanese characters. Ben thinks of himself like Helen Keller."

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This item was indexed and curated by Cairo, JL;DR's web crawler.
Cairo Item ID 51541
Cairo Source ID 3
Retrieved 2025-05-14 05:31:04 UTC
Curated 2025-05-14 08:31:34 UTC