In 1985, Screech received a BA in Oriental Studies (Japanese) at the University of Oxford. In 1991, he completed his PhD in art history at Harvard University. As well as his permanent posts, he has been visiting professor at the University of Chicago, Heidelberg University, and Tokyo University of Foreign Studies and guest researcher at Gakushuin University and Waseda University in Japan, and at Yale, Berkeley and UCLA in the USA. His main current research project is related to the deification of the first Tokugawa shogun, Ieyasu, in 1616-17, and his cult as the Great Avatar.
In July 2018 Screech was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA).[1]
Screech’s work had been translated into Chinese (Taiwan and PRC), French, German, Japanese, Korean, Polish and Romanian.
His leisure interests are ailurophilia, learning Burmese, and cultivating plants in the former Kingdom of the Ryukyus.
In 2022 he received both the Fukuoka Prize Academic Prize, and the Yamagata Bantō Prize
Published work includes
2020: The Shogun's Silver Telescope: God, Art & Money in the English Quest for Japan (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
2020: Tokyo before Tokyo: Power and Magic in the Shogun's City of Edo (London: Reaktion Books & Chicago: Chicago University Press)
2011: Obtaining Images: Art Production and Display in Edo Japan [London: Reaktion Books & Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press]
2007: Oranda ga true: Ningen kōryū no edo bijutsushi [The Dutch Are Passing: Edo art and the exchange of persons]. Tokyo: [University of Tokyo Press].
2003: Sex and Consumerism in Edo Japan. In: Consuming Bodies: Sex and Consumerism in Japanese Contemporary Art. London: Reaktion Books.
2002: "Dressing Samuel Pepys: Japanese Garments and International Diplomacy in the Edo Period", Orientations. Vol. 2, pp. 50–57.
2002: "Erotyczne obrazy japonskie 1700–1820". Universitas Kraków. ISBN1-86189-030-3
2002: "The Edo Pleasure Districts as 'Pornotopia'", Orientations, Vol. 2, pp. 36–42.
2001:"The Birth of the Anatomical Body", Births and Rebirths in Japanese Art. Leiden: Hotei Press.
2001: "The visual legacy of Dodonaeus in botanical and Human Categorisation", Dodonaeus in Japan: Translation and the Scientific Mind in Tokugawa Japan. Leuven: Leuven University Press.
2000: The Shogun's Painted Culture: Fear and Creativity in the Japanese States, 1760–1829. London: Reaktion Books. (London). ISBN1-86189-064-8.