Thomas Pekar wrote his doctoral thesis on the Austrian writer Robert Musil; habilitation in modern German literature at the University of Munich with a study on the European reception of Japan. Scholarships and fellowships (including at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Historisches Kolleg in Munich), research projects, and teaching in Germany, Japan, South Korea, and the USA. DAAD lecturer at the University of Tokyo. Since 2001, he has been a professor of German literature and cultural studies at Gakushuin University in Tokyo. Research on exile literature, cultural contacts (especially Jewish exile in Asia), and classical modernist literature.