Ian Buruma (born 1951) is an Anglo-Dutch writer, journalist and commentator, particularly on Asia.

He was born in the Netherlands, to a Dutch father and English mother. He studied Chinese literature, and then Japanese film at Nihon University in Tokyo. He then held an number of editorial and academic positions.

He has held fellowships at the Woodrow Wilson Institute for the Humanities , Washington, D.C and St. Antony's College, Oxford. In 2003 he became Luce Professor of Democracy, Human Rights & Journalism at Bard College, New York.

He is resident in London.

Works

• The Japanese Tattoo (1980) with Donald Richie
• Behind the Mask: On Sexual Demons, Sacred Mothers, Transvestites, Gangsters, Drifters, and Other Japanese Cultural Heroes (1983)
• Tokyo: Form and Spirit (1986) with James R. Brandon , Kenneth Frampton , Martin Friedman , Donald Richie
• God's Dust: A Modern Asian Journey (1989)
• Great Cities of the World: Hong Kong (1991)
• Playing the Game (1991) novel
• The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and in Japan (1994)
• Geisha: The Life, the Voices, the Art (1998) with Jodi Cobb
• Voltaire's Coconuts, or Anglomania in Europe (1998)
• The Missionary and the Libertine: Love and War in East and West, 2000
• Bad Elements: Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing (2001)
• Inventing Japan: From Empire to Economic Miracle 1853-1964 (2003)
• Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies (2004) with Avishai Margalit