He has translated into English works by authors such as Hitomi Kanehara, Yasutaka Tsutsui, Taichi Yamada, Hisaki Matsuura, and Shinji Ishii, co-edited (with Elmer Luke) the anthology March Was Made of Yarn: Writers Respond to the Japanese Earthquake, Tsunami, and Nuclear Meltdown, and serves as international editor of Granta Japan. In 2008 he helped found the Read Japan initiative at the Nippon Foundation, a partnership among authors, translators, editors, publishers, and universities to facilitate the publication of Japanese literature in translation.