Stephen M. Alpert was born in 1949 or 1950. A native of the state of
Connecticut in the United States, he partially lived in Japan from 1974 to 1979, mostly in
Kyoto and partly in
Tokyo. In 1976, he started studying Japanese literature under
Donald Keene at
Columbia University, and earned his
Master of Business Administration in 1981. He worked for
Citibank in Tokyo as a vice president before serving as the president of
Walt Disney Studios's Japanese television animation arm. Alpert later worked with
Studio Ghibli, including as part of its parent company
Tokuma International, for 15 years between 1996 and 2011 as a senior executive, heading their international department and acting as their spokesperson with foreign third parties during that time. He represented the studio in negotiations with Disney and
Miramax Films. During the production of the English dub of
Princess Mononoke(1997), Alpert assisted
Neil Gaiman with the translation of the script. Alpert returned to
New Haven, Connecticut, in 2012, after leaving Studio Ghibli. In 2020, Alpert published
Sharing a House with the Never-Ending Man, a memoir about his co-residence with Studio Ghibli's
Hayao Miyazaki and experiences working at the animation studio. The cover features Castorp, a character from
The Wind Rises(2013) based on and voiced by Alpert. It was originally published in 2016 as a Japanese-language edition titled
I Am a Gaijin: The Man Who Sold Ghibli to the World.
Stone Bridge Press published the English version and included it in a bundle on Japanese culture in 2022.
Tokyo Weekender Nick Narigon felt that the book "humanizes" Miyazaki, a divergence from other accounts of that focus on his "eccentricities and notoriously demanding work ethic."
Andrew Osmond, reviewing for
Anime News Network, appreciated the comedic anecdotes featured in the book and found the prose in between "dry, but still hugely enlightening."
Publishers Weekly, however, wrote that the book's "workmanlike" writing would more easily attract an audience of foreign immigrants in Japan than fans of Studio Ghibli works. In 2022, Stone Bridge Press published Alpert's novel
Kyoto Stories, a series of connected stories following an American student in Kyoto in the 1970s. == Selected bibliography ==