Japan Faculty
The Japan Studies Program is interdisciplinary and draws from faculty across campus. Faculty incorporate their research results on Japan into courses in business, anthropology, sociology, economics, architecture, art, history, and a variety of other fields. In addition, courses in Japanese language are taught by a staff of highly trained lecturers, teaching associates, and native-speaking teaching assistants as well as by language and literature professors listed below.
Marie Anchordoguy is a professor in
the Jackson School of International Studies and specializes in the
political economy of Japan. She received her undergraduate, masters
and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. He
research is focused primarily on the role of the state in Japan's
industrial development. Her latest book, Reprogramming Japan: The Hight Tech Crisis Under Communitarian Capitalism (Cornell University
Press, 2005), examines how the performance of particular industries
and the economy as a whole are affected by the socially embedded
nature of Japan's capitalist system, which she calls "communitarian
capitalism". Anchordoguy has also published a number of articles in
journals such as The Journal of Japanese Studies, Business History
Review, International Organization and The Political Science Review.
Her current research is on Japan-China economic relations. Anchordoguy teaches courses on Japanese business and technology, as
well as readings in the political economy of Japan.
Andrea G. Arai is a part-time lecturer in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington and the Department of Anthropology. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2004 and is currently completing a book on the effects of the economic downturn of the 1990s in Japan and how these effects are reshaping representations of Japan and its youth. Arai’s latest publications include: “The Wild Child of 1990s Japan” in Yoda and Harootunian, eds.,
Japan After Japan: Social and Cultural Life from the Recessionary 1990s to the Present
(Duke University Press, 2006), and “The Neoliberal Subject of Lack and Potential: Developing the “Frontier Within” and Creating a Reserve Army of Labor in Japan,” in
Rhizomes: Studies in Emerging Knowledge, 10, Spring, 2005 (http://www.rhizomes.net/issue10/arai.htm).
She is working on a manuscript titled “Disciplining Hearts and Minds: Patriotic Education and the Crisis of the Child in Post-Recessionary Japan,” forthcoming in a volume she is co-editing with Ann Anagnost, Global Futures in East Asia. Courses taught by Arai at the UW include Japanese Society, Anthropology of Japan, Japan’s Changing Generations, Introduction to Japanese Studies, Global Futures in East Asia, History of Anthropology, and the Anthropology of Security.
Paul Atkins is an associate professor of Japanese in the Department of Asian Languages and Literature. His field of specialization is classical Japanese literature and drama.
Professor Atkins is author of Revealed Identity: The Noh Plays of Komparu Zenchiku (Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2006), the first comprehensive study of the nō plays of the fifteenth-century actor, playwright, and theoretician Komparu Zenchiku. He has also published articles in
The Journal of Asian Studies, The Harvard Journal of Asian Studies,
Monumenta Nipponica, and other journals. Current research projects include a study of the courtier-poet Fujiwara no Teika (1162-1241).
Professor Atkins teaches an undergraduate survey of classical Japanese literature in translation, advanced courses in classical Japanese language, and graduate seminars in premodern Japanese literature and culture. He was awarded the Ph.D. in Japanese by Stanford University in 1999.
Davinder Bhowmik is an associate professor in the Department of Asian Languages
and Literature. She received her Ph.D. in modern Japanese literature from the
University of Washington in 1997. Her research focuses on questions of history,
memory, and representation in atomic bomb fiction as well as issues of language,
identity, and culture in Okinawan fiction. Her recent book, Writing Okinawa:
Narrative Acts of Identity and Resistance (Routledge, 2008), traces the
development of Okinawan literature through the tumultuous twentieth century,
during which the island experienced imperial subjectification, wartime
annihilation, a protracted American occupation, and reversion to Japan. Bhowmik
is also author of “Literature as Public Memory: The Writings of Medoruma Shun,”
in Josef Kreiner, ed., Japaneseness versus Ryukyuanism: Papers Read at the
Fourth International Conference on Okinawa Studies (Bier'sche Verlagsanstalt,
2006) and other works on modern Japanese literature. She teaches courses on
modern Japanese literature and cinema.
Cynthea Bogel is an associate professor of Art History (School of Art.) She received her Ph.D. in 1995 in East Asian art history from Harvard University. Her recent research on Japanese Buddhist visual culture examines the ancient reception of a Buddhist icon or image in the temple or ritual setting. Bogel’s forthcoming book,
With A Single Glance: Icon, Vision, and Visual Efficacy, in Early Japanese Esoteric Contexts, explores Japan’s Mikkyō (Esoteric Shingon and Tendai) Buddhist temples and icons during the ninth century and the broader epistemological impact of a new esoteric “visuality” on representation and “vision.” She recently received research grants from the Japan Foundation, J. Paul Getty Foundation, and the UW Royalty Research Fund for published research on items imported from Tang China to Japan in 806. Her newest research includes a book-length manuscript on Edo-period (1603–1868) ukiyo-e (woodblock prints) and on contemporary tourist activities at Buddhist temples in Japan. Courses taught by Bogel examine all periods and forms of Japanese art (painting, prints, Buddhist art, textiles, and survey classes, and thematic graduate seminars) as well as ancient architecture.
Donald Hellmann is a professor in the Jackson School of International Studies and the Department of Political Science and Director of the Institute for International Policy (IIP). He received his undergraduate education at Princeton University and holds masters and doctoral degrees in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. Hellmann has been a member of the University of Washington faculty since 1967. Since 1994, he has been director of the University’s APEC Study Center and from 1994–96 he served as chair of the US Consortium of APEC Study Centers. In these capacities, and using the IIP, he has taken the lead in the creation of a region-wide consortium of universities and research centers devoted to cooperative research and practical initiatives regarding regional policy, technology, and development issues in the Pacific Rim. He is currently working on a book, concerning integrating Asia into the global political economy and on the creation of an institution on energy cooperation in Northeast Asia. Hellmann has written or edited six major books on Asia and International Relations and published more than sixty articles and monographs. His publications include
Japanese Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy (University of California Press, 1969) and
From APEC to Xanadu: The Pacific Challenge to the Global Political Economy, which he co-authored with Kenneth B. Pyle (M.E. Sharpe, 1998). Hellmann teaches courses on Japanese government and politics, American foreign policy as well as the international relations of Northeast Asia.
Akiko Iwata is a lecturer of Japanese language in the Department of Asian Languages and Literature. Iwata received her first M.A. in English as Second Language from the University of Minnesota in 2001 and her second M.A. in Japanese language pedagogy from Columbia University in 2002. Before coming to the US, she taught English in Japanese junior and senior high school for five years. She has taught undergraduate Japanese-language classes at both the University of Minnesota and the University of Washington. At the University of Washington, Iwata teaches various Japanese courses from first year through fourth year. She has also developed a new curriculum, created online course websites and learning materials, and performed as TA coordinator. Her current projects include developing a third-year Japanese placement test as well as preparing new instructional materials for new course. She is currently on leave through the winter quarter of 2009.
Masashi Kato is senior lecturer and associate director in the Technical Japanese
Program of the Department of Technical Communication in the College of
Engineering. He received his B.A. from Keio University and a M.A. from
University of Washington. He has been a faculty member of the Technical
Japanese Program since its inception in 1991. Kato currently teaches Japanese
for Technical and Business Professions and Japanese for Heritage Learners. His
current research focuses on technology enhanced language teaching and learning;
developing and implementing multimedia tools for oral communication instruction;
distance learning for language training, and socio-linguistic analysis of daily
language use in Japanese work situations. His latest project examines
relationship between non-native learners’ reading strategies and effectiveness
of reading comprehension using an eye-tracking system.
Ted Mack is an associate professor of modern Japanese literature in the Department of Asian Languages and Literature. He received his M.A. in modern Japanese literature from Columbia University and his Ph.D. from Harvard University. Mack’s book,
Manufacturing Modern Japanese Literature: Anthologies, Awards, and the Ascription of Literary Value
(Duke University Press, 2008), focuses on the relationship between literature and the publishing industry. His latest project examines the role of literature in the Japanese diaspora, with a particular focus on Brazil and the production and consumption of literary texts from both Tokyo and São Paulo. Mack has done extensive research and published many articles on modern Japanese literature. His areas of interest include modern Japanese language prose, art in capitalist marketplaces, the flow of literary works throughout the larger Japanese linguistic community, the function of power in the literary field, and theories of diaspora and heterogeneity, particularly as they challenge culturalist concepts of national identity. He teaches courses and seminars in modern Japanese literature.
Izumi Matsuda is a lecturer of Japanese language in the Department of Asian Languages and Literature. She earned her B.A. in English from Osaka Women’s University in 1990 and an M.A. in Japanese from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1992. Matsuda’s research focuses on Japanese language and pedagogy. She teaches first-, second-, and fourth-year Japanese courses. The purpose of those courses is to build or continue building a solid foundation in reading, writing, speaking, and understanding Japanese, with classroom and homework activities designed to help students achieve a practical command of the language.
Miyako Imai McDavid is a lecturer in the Department of Asian Languages and Literature. She received her B.A. from Waseda University in Tokyo and an M.A. from the University of Pittsburgh. McDavid has been teaching the distance-learning program, Business Japanese Online, since Autumn Quarter 2004. This language course is taught entirely online and half of the participants are college students and the other half are businesspeople. Students independently study lesson materials and multimedia grammar drills that are delivered online. Unique parts of this course are programs called Language Partner and Conversation Partner. These software programs enable students to engage in interactive communication with other students and the instructor online. Imai McDavid is interested in Japanese language and pedagogy, technology-enhanced language learning.
Katherine Mezur, an assistant professor in the School of Drama, is a feminist scholar, director, and choreographer whose research focuses on gender studies, corporeality and media, and transnational performance in the Asia Pacific region. She holds a Ph.D. in Theatre and Dance, emphasis on Asian Performance, from the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, an M.A. in Dance (Mills College) and a BA in Film and Photography (Hampshire College). She is author of
Beautiful Boys/Outlaw Bodies: Devising Female-likeness on the Kabuki Stage (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), a history of the kabuki female gender performance and its contemporary practices, aesthetics, and politics. Her current project, “Cute Mutant Girls: Remapping the Female Body in Contemporary Japanese Performance,” focuses on contemporary Japanese women choreographers/directors, performers, and visual artists. She is one of the team of engineers and artists on an NSF (National Science Foundation) grant, "SGER: Collaborative Research: Interactive Choreography in 3D Tele-Immersive Spaces—Expanding Human Perception through Creative Practice," for 2007-8. Mezur
teaches courses on theater and drama, specializing in analysis of dramatic
texts.
Itsuko Nishikawa is a lecturer in the Department of Asian Languages and Literature. Nishikawa took her M.A. in Applied Linguistics from Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research focuses on Japanese language and pedagogy. She currently teaches course on advanced writing in Japanese, which aims to develop cognitive academic language proficiency in Japanese, focusing on writing. Nishikawa also teaches third-year Japanese classes.
Toshiyuki Ogihara is an associate professor in the Department of Linguistics. He earned his Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin and also studied linguistics at Sophia University (Tokyo, Japan), from which he received an M.A. in linguistics. Ogihara’s work focuses on formal semantics, syntax semantics interface, and Japanese linguistics. He is currently working on an essay, “Counterfactual Conditionals and Focus Crosslinguistically,” to appear in a volume from John Benjamins. He submitted a complete manuscript of
The Semantics of Japanese (under contract with Cambridge University Press) and prepared “Chapter 64. Tense” for publication in Maienborn, von Heusinger, and Portner, eds.,
Semantics: An International Handbook of Natural Language Meaning (Walter de Gruyter). His articles have appeared in major semantics and linguistics journals in both the United States and Japan. In 2006, Ogihara received a grant from the National Institute of Informatics (Tokyo) and conducted joint research on integrating the semantics of focus into an explicit model of grammar that also ties together the phonology, syntax and pragmatics of focus. He is currently teaching courses on semantics (Semantics I, II; The Semantics of Japanese) and linguistics (Problems in Linguistics: Intentional Semantics: Attitudes, Modality, and Conditionals).
Amy Ohta is an associate professor in the Department of Asian Languages and Literature. She holds an M.A. in teaching English as a second language as well as a Ph.D. in applied linguistics from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research and teaching fields include applied linguistics, acquisition of Japanese as a second language, sociolinguistics, and bilingualism. Most recently, she is coeditor (with Junko Mori) of Japanese Applied Linguistics (Continuum, 2008). She has also conducted extensive research in her field of interest and published essays in Applied Linguistics, Japanese Language & Literature, Japanese Applied Linguistics, Readings in Second Language Acquisition, and Second Language Pedagogy in a Japanese Context. She teaches courses on Japanese language in society and on other topics in Japanese sociolinguistics.
Kaoru Ohta is a senior lecturer in the Department of Asian Languages and Literature. He took his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in linguistics from the University of California, Los Angeles. His research is on Japanese linguistics, syntax, and morphology. Ohta’s key publications include "Kakari-musubi and Focus Structure," in Akatsuka, Strauss, and Comrie, eds.,
Japanese/Korean Linguistics 10 (CSLI Publications, 2002); "Tense in the Subject Raising Construction," in Sohn and Haig, eds.,
Japanese/Korean Linguistics (CSLI Publications, 1997); and “The Verbal Stem Form of Japanese,"
Journal of Association of Teachers of Japanese (1995). His current research projects concentrate on semantics/pragmatic based analysis of Modern Japanese in-situ and its relation to Old Japanese interrogative constructions. Ohta
teaches introductory linguistics and Japanese language courses.
Judy Okada is a lecturer in the Department of Asian Languages and Literature and a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, which awarded her an M.A. in Japanese literature and a Ph.D. in Japanese linguistics. Okada’s research focuses on Japanese language, pedagogy, grammar, and phonology.
Ken Tadashi Oshima is an assistant professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Washington, where he teaches in the areas of trans-national architectural history, theory, representation, and design. He earned an A.B. degree, magna cum laude, in East Asian Studies and Visual & Environmental Studies from Harvard College, M. Arch. degree from U. C. Berkeley and Ph.D. in architectural history and theory from Columbia University. From 2003-5, he was a Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Fellow at the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures in London. Dr. Oshima’s forthcoming publications include a monograph on Arata Isozaki (Phaidon, 2008) and Constructing Kokusai Kenchiku: International Architecture in Interwar Japan (U.W. Press, 2009). He is an author for the Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Home Delivery (2008), curator of the exhibition SANAA: Beyond Borders (Henry Art Gallery 2007-8), and co-curator of Crafting a Modern World: The Architecture and Design of Antonin and Noémi Raymond. An editor and contributor to Architecture + Urbanism for more than ten years, he co-authored the two-volume special issue, Visions of the Real: Modern Houses in the 20th Century (2000). His articles on the international context of architecture and urbanism in Japan have been published in The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Architectural Theory Review, Kenchiku Bunka, Japan Architect, L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui, and the AA Files.
Robert Pekkanen is chair of the Japan Studies Program and an associate professor in the Jackson School of International Studies. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University in 2002. He has published articles on Japanese politics in The American Political Science Review, The British Journal of Political Science, The Journal of Japanese Studies, and other journals. His recent book Japan's Dual Civil Society: Members without Advocates (Stanford University Press, 2006) won the Ohira Prize in 2008 and an award from the Japanese Nonprofit Research Association (JANPORA) in 2007. The Japan Times also featured it as one of the "Best Asia Books" of 2006. A Japanese translation appeared in 2008. Pekkanen has received a major grant from the National Science Foundation to study how electoral systems shape both legislative organization and what kinds of people earn nominations to run for political office in 8 countries (with Ellis Krauss and Matt Shugart, University of California, San Diego) and another grant from the Japan Society for Promotion of Science to conduct research on the U.S. nonprofit sector (with Steven Rathgeb Smith, Evans School, University of Washington). He teaches an introductory class on contemporary Japan and graduate and undergraduate courses on Japanese civil society, political parties in East Asia.
Saadia M. Pekkanen is the Job and Gertrud Tamaki Professor of Japan Studies at the Jackson School of International Studies, and Adjunct Professor of Law at the School of Law, University of Washington. Her graduate training includes a master’s in international affairs from Columbia University (1988), a doctorate in political science from Harvard University (1996), and a master’s from Yale Law School (2004). Reflecting her multi-disciplinary background, her teaching and research interests are in international political economy, international trade and investment law, international relations, and foreign policy. Her work explores the intersection between legal and economic matters involving Japan, and has recently branched out to examine Japan’s current role and status within Asia along these dimensions. Another research interest focuses on Japan’s national security matters and interaction with other dominant powers in world politics. Pekkanen’s earlier books included Picking Winners? From Technology Catch-up to the Space Race in Japan (Stanford University Press, 2003), and a co-edited book entitled Japan and China in the World Political Economy (Routledge, 2005). Her latest book, entitled Japan’s Aggressive Legalism: Law and Foreign Trade Politics Beyond the WTO (Stanford University Press, 2008), examines how law has interacted with the concrete interests of Japan’s trade-dominant industries to dramatically reshape the country’s foreign trade politics. Currently, she is co-authoring a new book entitled In Defense of Japan: From the Market to the Military in Space Policy (under contract with Stanford University Press), which examines the institutional, industrial, and legal changes in Japan’s space sector that are coming to the fore in the country’s dynamic new security environment. Pekkanen teaches general classes on the law and politics of international trade and investment, as well as classes on Japan’s international relations, trade politics, and national security.
Kenneth B. Pyle is the Henry M. Jackson Professor of History and Asian Studies and founding president of the National Bureau of Asian Research. Pyle received a B.A.
magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1958 and his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1965, where he was the Walter Hines Page Fellow in International Relations. Pyle is the author and editor of numerous books on modern Japan and its history, including
The New Generation in Meiji Japan (1969), The Trade Crisis: How Will Japan Respond?
(1987), The Japanese Question: Power and Purpose in a New Era (1992),
The Making of Modern Japan (1996), and From APEC to Xanadu: Creating a
Viable Community in the Post-Cold War Pacific (1997). He founded the
Journal of Japanese Studies in 1974 and continued to serve as its editor
until 1986. Pyle’s most recent publication, written for the Century Foundation,
is Japan Rising: The Resurgence of Japanese Power and Purpose (Public
Affairs Books, 2006). He has received a number of grants and awards, among them
the Order of the Rising Sun—the highest imperial honor given by the Government
of Japan—for his contributions to scholarship and cultural exchange. He
currently teaches courses on modern Japanese history and seminars on special
topics (Hiroshima and Nagasaki).
A scholar of medieval Japanese history, David Spafford received his Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2006. His appointment as an assistant professor is in the Department of History. Spafford’s research focuses on the cultural and political values of land and on shifting senses of identity and place in the age of warring states. His current projects include “An Apology of Betrayal: Political and Narrative Strategies in a Late Medieval Memoir” and “Machiavellian Loyalty: Asakura Sōteki waki and the Way of Governance in the Warring States Period.” Spafford teaches courses for advanced history majors and a course on Japanese civilization.
Toshiko Takenaka, a Washington Research Foundation Simpson Professor of Law, joined the UW law school faculty in 1993 and teaches patent law, advanced patent law, intellectual property, and intellectual property innovations in science and technology. She is director of the Center for Advanced Study and Research on Intellectual Property (CASRIP) and associate director of the Intellectual Property Law and Policy LL.M. Program. After receiving a bachelor of law degree from Seikei University, Tokyo, Takenaka pursued a successful career in patent prosecution and management with Texas Instruments Japan Ltd., where she served as a patent prosecution specialist. She was rewarded an LL.M. in 1990 and her Ph.D. in comparative law in 1992 from the University of Washington School Of Law. Takenaka
has published extensively in the field of comparative patent law and is a
frequent speaker at academic and professional seminars focusing on patent law.
Dan Fenno Henderson Professor of Law Veronica Taylor is the Director of the Asian Law Center and is responsible for the J.D., LL.M., Ph.D., and Visiting Scholar programs in Asian, Comparative and Development Law. She took her LL.B. from the University of Monash in Australia in 1988, and in 1992 University of Washington awarded her LL.M. Professor Taylor joined the Asian Law Center faculty in 2001, leading a team of fifteen faculty and staff. Professor also serves as a faculty advisor to the Pacific Rim Law and Policy Journal. She specializes in commercial law and society in Asia, Japanese Law, regulation, law and development. Professor Taylor has published extensively on commercial law in Japan and Indonesia, on regulation, law and society in Asia and on the 21st century challenges of law and development. She teaches Japanese law related courses.
Kyoko Tokuno is a senior lecturer in Comparative Religion at the Jackson School of International Studies. She is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and received her Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies in 1994. Since then she has taught at the University of Oregon and joined the UW faculty in 2001. Her current interests focus on Buddhist texts and culture of medieval China and Japan, their relation to Indian Buddhism, and development of Buddhist canon in East Asia. Tokuno’s most recent projects include
Byways in Medieval Chinese Buddhism: The Book of Trapusa and Indigenous
Scriptures (Kuroda Institute Studies in East Asian Buddhism Series,
University of Hawaii Press), which has been accepted for publication. She has
published articles in The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion,
chapters in Encyclopedia of Buddhism and A Bibliographic Guide to the
Comparative Study of Ethics, and a translation of “The Book of Resolving
Doubts Concerning the Age of Semblance Dharma” in Buddhism in Practice.
She teaches courses on Buddhism and world religions.
Michio Tsutsui established the Technical Japanese Program at the University of Washington and has directed it since its inception in 1990. He received a B.S. in Naval Engineering from Osaka University, Japan, and worked several years for IBM Japan as a systems engineer. In 1984, Tsutsui earned a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. The next year he moved to MIT to set up the Japanese language program, which he directed until 1990. Tsutsui is a national leader in technical Japanese. He has written a number of articles on technical Japanese and teaching Japanese to engineers and scientists, given numerous presentations on these topics at national and international conferences, and organized workshops to promote collaboration among programs and individuals engaged in or interested in teaching technical Japanese. Tsutsui is also active in promoting the use of technology for foreign language learning. His areas of interest include Japanese linguistics, second language acquisition, Japanese for special purposes and technology-enhanced language learning. He teaches advanced Japanese courses for technical and business professionals.
Staff and Library
ANNETTE BERNIER
Asian Studies Program Coordinator,
Japan Studies Program.
ELLEN ESKENAZI
Director of Outreach and Program
Development, Japan Studies
Program
Senior Program Associate, Japan Studies Program and Managing Editor, Journal of Japanese Studies
KEIKO YOKOTA-CARTER
Japanese Studies Librarian.
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