Kazuo Ueda (born 1943) is a Japanese linguist and scholar. He is Japan's leading Yiddishist. Ueda graduated from Kōchi University and received a master's degree in German literature from the University of Tokyo. While studying German-language Jewish writer Franz Kafka in graduate school, he learned of Yiddish. He said it fascinated him because reading it felt like solving a puzzle. He was mostly self-taught, with some aid from Japan's limited Jewish community and multiple visits to Israel. One of two scholars to introduce the study of Yiddish to Japan, Ueda published the first Japanese examination of Yiddish grammar and literature in 1970, the first Japanese book on Yiddish in 1985, and the first Japanese dictionary on Yiddish in 2010. His Yiddish dictionary was the first in a non-European language, besides Hebrew. Ueda also worked on Ladino, as a scholar of Kafka, and on Jewish studies. Beginning in 1969 and until he retired in 2012, Ueda was a German studies professor at Ehime, Kōchi, and Fukuoka University.
Source: “Kazuo Ueda (linguist)”, English Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0), excerpt