Faculty and Staff

2009-2010

Director

Henry Smith is KCJS Director and a professor of Japanese History at Columbia University . Professor Smith wrote his dissertation on the Japanese student movement of the 1920s and 1930s (published as Japan 's First Student Radicals, Harvard, 1972, and Shinjinkai no kenkyû: Nihon gakusei undô no genryû, Tokyo University Press, 1978). He previously taught at Princeton University and the University of California , Santa Barbara . His research has dealt primarily with diverse aspects the history of urban culture in modern Japan, particularly that of the city of Edo-Tokyo from the 18th through the 20th century. He is especially interested in the history of printing and publishing in Japan, and 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). He is also interested in the history of Japanese architecture, having written a book on Taizansô and the One-Mat Room (Tokyo: International Christian University, 1994), and he is currently editing a volume of essays on the theme of “Architecture and Modern Japan.” More recently, he has embarked on research on the history and legend of the “47 Ronin” of Akô, and on the relationship between historical understanding and changing technologies of mass media in Japan . The most recent fruits of this exploration have appeared in a series on “400 Years of Chûshingura” in the journal Monumenta Nipponica.

KCJS Course Instructors

Asli M. Colpan is Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Management, Kyoto University, Japan. She obtained her M.Sc. at the Univeristy of Leeds in the U.K. and her Ph.D. at Kyoto Institute of Technology in Japan. Her research interests include corporate strategy, corporate governance, and especially the evolution of large enterprises in industrial and emerging economies. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in journals such as Industrial and Corporate Change, Asia Pacific Journal of Management and Asian Business and Management. She is also the co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Business Groups, Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming in 2009.

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.

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.

Keiko Ikeda is Professor of Anthropology and Dean of Graduate School of American Studies at Doshisha University.  She received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois–Champaign-Urbana. Her dissertation on American high school reunions was published as A Room Full of Mirrors: High School Reunions in Middle America by Stanford University Press. Before joining the Doshisha faculty, she taught at the University of Illinois–Champaign-Urbana, Hamilton College and Barnard College/Columbia University.  Her research interests include: US, Japan, transnational cultures, performance, gender, and roles of past in the present. In addition to writing, she works in video production: Her video ethnography of a Japanese festival in Himeji, Japan, entitled Fighting Festival, was awarded Red Ribbon Award (second place) in American Film Festival. In the past few years, she organized three international symposia on US-Japan cultural interactions.  One fruit of this endeavor is a production of On Another Playground: Japanese Popular Culture in America (DVD) which has been distributed by Asian Educational Media Service at University of Illinois.

 

Ayako Kano is Associate Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her B.A. from Keio University and her Ph.D. from Cornell University. She is the author of Acting Like a Woman in Modern Japan: Theater, Gender, and Nationalism (Palgrave, 2001) and is currently writing a book on Japanese feminist debates. She will teach a survey course on Japanese civilization, a course on Japanese theater, and a course on postwar Japanese fiction and film.

Bettina Langner-Teramoto is an architect and scholar based in Kyoto since 1989, now teaches at Ritsumeikan Architecture Department and Kyoto Womens University. She studied architecture at the Technical University Aachen (RWTH-Aachen) and at the Arts Academy in Duesselsdorf, Germany and was a researcher at Kyoto University and Ryukoku University in Kyoto on the expression of cultural phenomena in space. Publications for Japanese magazines on housing projects, ecological architecture and green-planning, Kyoto the old capital, preservation policies etc.. She will teach a course on Japanese housing architecture.

Catherine Ludvik obtained a Ph.D. at the University of Toronto in the Centre for the Study of Religion and teaches Japanese religion at Kyoto Sangyo University, the Stanford Japan Center and the Associated Kyoto Program at Doshisha University. Spanning Indian and Japanese religions, her research interests focus on the metamorphoses of originally Indian deities in Japan.
She is the author of Recontextualizing the Praises of a Goddess (2006) and Sarasvat, Riverine Goddess of Knowledge (2007), and is currently working on a volume on the goddess Uga-Benzaiten. She taught Japanese religion at KCJS between 2002?2006.

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

Miyuki Fukai received a Ph.D. in Language Education from Indiana University Bloomington in 2004 and taught Japanese at Columbia University from 2004-2008. While teaching, she has been involved in collaborative research projects which investigate blogging, podcasting, and literacy activities from the perspectives of sociocultural theory and critical literacy. Recently she coauthored a chapter in Japanese as a Foreign Language Education: Multiple Perspectives (edited by Yukiko Hatasa). She joined KCJS in summer 2008.

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.

Takayuki Nishimata joined the Japanese Language Program at KCJS in 2009.  He received a Ph.D. in Multilingual/Multicultural Education from Florida State University in 2008, a M.A. in Foreign Language Education from Ohio State University in 1998, and a B.A. in French from Osaka University of Foreign Studies in 1996.  His research interests include learning environment, environmental psychology, anxiety, motivation, and writing.  Before coming to KCJS, he taught at Salem International University and Hokkaido International Foundation.

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 has been at KCJS since 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.

Michiko Nakanishi is KCJS librarian. She is in charge of the development and maintenance of the collection of books and journals about Japan. She orders textbooks and prepares reading packets and assists students with references questions about resources for their research projects. She joined KCJS in summer 2008.

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.

Please click here for a list of 2008-2009 Faculty and Staff.