William H. Coaldrake is Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne, where he was Foundation Professor of Japanese and Head of Japanese Studies from 1992-2007. He was born in Japan of Australian missionary parents, and received his PhD from Harvard University, where he was most recently Edwin O. Reischauer Visiting Professor of Japanese Studies.

Professor Coaldrake is the only non-Japanese member of the Kyoto Guild of Traditional Master Builders (Kyoto dentô kenchiku gijutsu kyôkai), working on the restoration of heritage buildings. He has written two books informed by his experience: The Way of the Carpenter: Tools and Japanese Architecture (Weatherhill, 1990), and Architecture and Authority in Japan (Routledge, 1996). He recently edited his parents’ letters and reports from Japan in the immediate postwar years (Japan from War to Peace: The Coaldrake Records, 1939-1956, RoutledgeCurzon, 2003). He is currently completing a major new book on Japanese art and architecture from earliest times to the present for Phaidon Press.