The missing American man last seen Monday on Kuchinoerabu Island, Kagoshima Prefecture, is an award-winning poet and assistant professor at a U.S. university, according to his family and the school.
The man, identified by his brother as Craig Arnold, 41, is on the English department faculty at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. The author of two published volumes of poetry, Arnold is in Japan on the U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission's Creative Artists Exchange Fellowship, a press release by the university revealed.
Arnold was apparently visiting the active volcano on the island, 12 km west of Yakushima, for a book he is writing on volcanoes around the world. The last entry in his blog, titled "Volcano Pilgrim: Five Months in Japan as a Wandering Poet," appeared April 26, the day he disappeared.