Neil Waters retired as Kawashima Emeritus Professor of Japanese Studies and Professor of History in 2012, and after a term at the Associated Kyoto Program, moved with his wife Linda from Middlebury, Vermont to the Portland, Oregon area. Waters grew up as a western U.S. rolling stone, in Portland, San Diego, Fresno, Modesto, Denver, Sacramento, and back to Portland, where he graduated from Grant High School. He and his wife Linda both served in the Peace Corps in South Korea in 1967-69, and that experience crystallized his interest in Northeast Asia. He received his Ph.D in Japanese History from University of Hawaii in 1978. He was assistant and then associate professor of History at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. He arrived at Middlebury College in Vermont in 1990, where he was twice chair of the Department of History, and served as Director of International Studies and Director of East Asian Studies. He has lived in Japan a total of nine years, for periods varying from five months to two years.