William Andrews is a writer and translator in Tokyo.

He is the author of Dissenting Japan: A History of Japanese Radicalism and Counterculture, from 1945 to Fukushima (Hurst, 2016). His second book, The Japanese Red Army: A Short History, was adapted and expanded from a section of Dissenting Japan and published in German in 2018 by bahoe books.

His chapter “Anti-2020 als transnationale Bewegung: Die Schaffung autonomer Räume durch internationalen Protest und Solidarität” (Anti-2020 as a Transnational Movement: Creating Autonomous Spaces Through International Protest and Solidarity) was included in NOlympics. Tōkyō 2020/1 in der Kritik (eds. Steffi Richter, Andreas Singler, Dorothea Mladenova), published by Leipziger Universitätsverlag in 2020.

He has also written for Jacobin, CounterPunch, The Japan Times, Japan Focus: The Asia-Pacific Journal, Baku, ArtAsiaPacific, CounterFire, Tokyo Art Beat and more.

He is a prolific translator for the arts in Japan, especially visual art and the performing arts. His translation of Daisuke Miura’s award-winning play Love’s Whirlpool (2005) was published in 2018 by the Japan Playwrights Association, which also published his translation of Misaki Setoyama’s Their Enemy (2013) in 2019. He co-translated Tokyo Theatre Today: Conversations with Eight Emerging Theatre Artists (Hublet Publishing, 2011), edited by Kyoko Iwaki, and has translated or co-translated scripts and surtitles for plays by Kuro Tanino, Shu Matsui, Takahiro Fujita and more.

He is currently writing a biography of the film-maker and activist Masao Adachi.