Faculty and Staff

2008-2009
2007-2008

2008-2009

Director

James Ketelaar will be acting director of KCJS in the academic year 2008-09. He previously served as KCJS Professor in 1995-96, and again in fall 2004. He is currently Professor in History and East Asian Languages and Civilizations, and Director of the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan: Buddhism and its Persecution (1989), and is currently finishing a book on the importance of the barbarian and the frontier in the construction of Japanese national identity and national history, tentatively titled Ezo: A History of Japan's Eastern Frontier.

KCJS Course Instructors

Claire Cuccio is an independent scholar working on projects related to modern Japanese visual arts and East Asian comparative cultural policy. She completed her doctorate at Stanford University in modern Japanese literature, where her interdisciplinary work in art history produced a dissertation on an arts and literary magazine whose mission was to educate the Meiji public in the arts and humanism. She is currently writing on the collaboration of a group of artist and writers who helped to craft a cultural policy for Japan during the Meiji era of nation-building. She will teach a course on modern Japanese prints.

Sarah Frederick is Associate Professor of Japanese literature in the Department of Modern Languages and Comparative Literature at Boston University.She received her BA from Harvard and her PhD from the University of Chicago in 2000.She is the author of Turning Pages: Reading and Writing Women's Magazines in Interwar Japan (Hawai'i, 2006), and is currently writing a book about 20th century Japan through the works of popular fiction writer Yoshiya Nobuko.

Takashi Hikino is associate professor of industrial and business organization at the Graduate School of Economics at Kyoto University, where he teaches industrial organization, business economics, and corporate strategy, and comparative management. He regularly teaches a course on Japanese business economics.

Ikuo Kume is professor of political science at the School of Political Science and Economics, Waseda University. His research interest is in comparative political economy focusing on Japan. His publications in English include Disparaged Success: Labor Politics in Postwar Japan (Cornell University Press, 1998) and Local Government Development in Postwar Japan (Oxford University Press, 2001, co-authored with Michio Muramatsu and Farrukh Iqbal). He will teach a course on Japanese politics.

Junko Minamoto is part of the faculty at Kansai University. A specialist in Buddhism and women studies, she is the author of more than a dozen books including topics in Buddhism, Japanese women’s issues, and human rights. She regularly teaches a course in Japanese on gender studies in the spring semester at KCJS.

Masahiko Okada received a PhD from Stanford University in Religious Studies, and is current Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Tenri University in Nara. He is interested in Buddhist cosmography and in Japanese religious history of the nineteenth century, and has translated James Ketelaar’s Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan into Japanese. He will be teaching a course on Japanese religion in spring 2009.

Karin Swanson teaches at Otani, Kansai Gaidai and Kyoto Universities. An art historian, her specialization, ranging from the 17th-20th c., focusses on Kyoto painters, with emphasis on Zen sect monk-artists. Previous research also includes 19th-20th Japanese folk pottery. She teaches Japanese art history at KCJS.

Language Instructors

Orie Maeguchi joined the Japanese Language Program at KCJS in 2006. She received her B.A. in Western philosophy from Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, and her M.A. in Asian studies from University of Illinois . Before coming to KCJS, she taught at Columbia University, UCLA, the Inter-University Center for Japanese Studies in Yokohama, and in various other programs. She is the co-author of Shauman's Outline of Japanese Vocabulary.

Itsuko Nakamura joined the Japanese Language program at KCJS in 2007. She received her B.A. in Asian Studies from New York University and her M.A. and Ed.M in Applied Linguistics from Teachers College Columbia University. Before coming to the Center, she taught at New York University, Trinity College, Mount Holyoke College and Harvard University.

Mariko Uemiya has been at the Center since 1991. She received both a B.A. and a M.A. in English literature from Kobe College as well as an M.A. in teaching a second language from Temple University in Osaka. In addition to teaching at the Center, she has taught at the Illinois Center of Konan University in Kobe, at Japanese schools in Taiwan, and been the coordinator for study abroad programs for high school students.

Chihiro Yamaoka is the Director of the KCJS Japanese Language Program and has been part of the Japanese Language Program since the founding of KCJS in 1989. He received his B.A. in German literature from Chuo University in Tokyo and his M.A. in linguistics from Ohio University . Upon his return to Japan and before the establishment of the Center, Yamaoka sensei taught Japanese language at Osaka University for Foreign Studies and at the Illinois Center at Konan University in Kobe. He has also cowritten a series of Japanese language textbooks entitled Workbooks of Japanese Grammar for Upper-Elementary Level I, II, II, and IV.

Onsite Staff

Yoshiko Hollstein is financial officer of KCJS and oversees all financial matters. She manages the payment of bills, the movement of funds, and regular financial reporting.

Lisa Honda is student services coordinator for KCJS, helping students with extracurricular activities and housing issues, and is in charge of the local Web site. She is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, where she double-majored in Asian studies and Japanese language and literature. She joined the staff in 2002.

Faye Mizuzaki has been KCJS librarian since 1993 and is in charge of the development and maintenance of the collection of over 8,000 volumes of books and journals about Japan . She also deals with the ordering of textbooks and the preparation of reading packets, and advises students on the use of bibliographical resources for their research projects.

Fusako Shore is KCJS assistant director, handling office management, student services, academic reporting, scheduling, planning of enrichment programs, faculty relations, alumni affairs, and cooperative arrangements with Kyoto-area universities and organizations. Shore-san is a native of Kyoto and has been at KCJS since the first class in 1989-90.

Tazuko Wada is KCJS housing coordinator, overseeing all aspects of the housing programs, including homestays and apartments for students and visiting faculty. She also serves as administrative assistant, overseeing facilities, equipment, and inventory. Wada-san has been with the KCJS since 1993.

2007-2008

Director

Henry Smith is KCJS Director and oversees all KCJS academic, financial,and administrative matters. He was KCJS Professor in 1999-2000 (KCJS 11), and represented Columbia on the KCJS Governing Board for four years. Until assuming the directorship of KCJS, he served as professor of Japanese history at Columbia University,a title that he continues to hold. He wrote his dissertation at Harvard Universityon the Japanese student movement of the 1920s and 1930s (published as Japan's First Student Radicals [1972], and Shinjinkai no kenkyû: Nihon gakusei undô no genryû [1978). He taught at PrincetonUniversity and the University of California, Santa Barbara, before moving to Columbia in 1988. His research has dealt primarily with aspects the history of urban culture in modern Japan,particularly that of the city of Edo-Tokyo. He has written widely on woodblock prints,including the books Hiroshige, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (1986), Hokusai, One Hundred Views of Mt. Fuji (1988),and Kiyochika: Artist of Meiji Japan (1988). More recently<>, he has written several articles about “Chûshingura,” both the historical Akô Incident of 1701-03 and subsequent retellings of the story in various media. He has recently taught courses at KCJS on “Kyoto: The Past and the Present<,” and “Lost in Translation.” He will be on sabbatical leave from KCJS in 2008-09.

KCJS Course Instructors

James Baskind is a project researcher at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies, in Kyoto, Japan. His research interests focus on the Obaku school of Zen, about which he wrote his PhD dissertation at Yale University, as well as Tokugawa Buddhism and the reception of Zen outside Japan. Other research interests include Buddhist morality tales and Edo-period kaidan (ghost stories), Meiji-period religion and thought, in particular the discourse of religion, science, and superstition (yôkai culture) as seen in the writings of figures such as Lafcadio Hearn and Inoue Enryo. He will teach a course on Zen Buddhism in Japan.

Marvin Marcus is an Associate Professor of Japanese Language and Literature, Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures, Washington University in St. Louis. His primary research interest concerns the broad domain of personal narrative—memoir, reminiscence, autobiography, essay, diary—and the place of such writing within the modern Japanese literary milieu and in other literary traditions as well. He is also interested in Japanese poetry and is an active poet, having recently published a book entitled Orientations: The Found Poetry of Scholarly Discourse on Asia. He will teach two courses at KCJS as the visiting KCJS Professor.

Junko Minamoto is part of the faculty at Kansai University . A specialist in Buddhism and women studies, she is the author of more than a dozen books including topics in Buddhism, Japanese women’s issues, and human rights. She regularly teaches a course in Japanese on gender studies in the spring semester at KCJS.

Language Instructors

Sachiko Kitagawa (Spring 2008 only) joined the Japanese language program at KCJS in 2008.She received her B.A. in Japanese Studies from Kyoto University of Foreign Studies and her M.A. in Japanese Language Education from Waseda University. Before coming to KCJS, She taught Japanese language at Grinnell College and Pedagogical Grammar in Japanese at Kyoto University of Foreign Studies.

Haruka Ueda (Fall 2007 only) joined the Japanese Language program at KCJS in 1990. She received her BA in English Literature from Nanzan University in Nagoya and her MA in Philosophy and Education from the Teacher's College at Columbia University . Before coming to the Center, she taught at both Princeton University and Columbia University.

Onsite Staff

Yoshiko Hollstein is financial officer of KCJS and oversees all financial matters. She manages the payment of bills, the movement of funds, and regular financial reporting.