Harold Gould Henderson was born on July 25, 1889, in New York, New York. He served in the US Army during World War I after graduating from Columbia University, achieving the rank of lieutenant colonel and earning a Bronze Star. From 1927 to 1929, he worked as an assistant curator of the Far East Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1934, Henderson began teaching the history of Japanese art at his alma mater.

A scholar of Japanese art and literature, Henderson contributed to MFAA operations in occupied Japan, serving on General Douglas MacArthur’s general headquarters staff as a civilian advisor on education, religion, and art. In Tokyo, along with fellow scholar R. H. Blyth, he acted as a liaison between General MacArthur and Japan’s imperial household and helped write the emperor of Japan’s historic speech in which he renounced his personal divinity.

Henderson returned to Columbia until his retirement in 1956. He was president of the Society of Japanese Studies and the Japan Society from 1948 to 1952 and was also the author of The Bamboo Room (1933) and its revised version, An Introduction to Haiku (1958), the first notable works on modern English-language haiku.

Harold Henderson died on July 11, 1974, and is interred at Tannersville, New York. His papers were given to the New York Public Library following his death.