Who is he — this Todd being spoken of?

He has been, among other things:

• A Ph.D of interdisciplinary social science;

• A professor of mediated sociology;

• The first tenured professor at Tohoku University — one of Japan's oldest and most storied public universities;

• Collegiate and professional basketball coach, of both men and women, in both the United States and Japan;

• Featured columnist on Japanese popular culture, as well as travel blogger for the ezine, PopMatters;

• Teacher and researcher at a host of august institutions, including: Harvard, UCLA, Tufts and Syracuse;

• Composer and instrumentalist of regrettably humble renown;

• Author of numerous peer-reviewed academic books and articles, but also (and especially!) creator of sublime works of literature — ranging from first-person confessional to historical reportage to flights of frolicking imagination — including, chronologically:

• Peripatetic Postcards: the journey of life through twenty-five of the world's cities—a travel memoir;

• Mr. Big Maus, a farce for late-blooming millennials, centering on contemporary corporate mores,  techno-consumerism, the self-made/self-prop zeitgeist, post-consciousness coming-of-age, and deliverance of righteous comeuppance; and

• The 3-11 Trilogy, a story cycle of interlinked novels, based on Japan's triple disaster of mega-quake, tsunami and nuclear disaster; addressing themes of catastrophic life change, endurance, trust, redemption and the search for meaning in a suddenly sundered world.