Sociology Department

Background:

My grandparents had only six years of education. Although my father made it to college, my mother did not. I grew up in a small town in central Japan and attended public schools before going to International Christian University (Tokyo) and Haverford College (Pennsylvania). As an undergrad I studied philosophy and sociology. In August 2009, I received a PhD in sociology from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and started as an assistant professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. I am also a faculty member of the Center for Japanese Studies.

I am going to be a postdoctoral fellow in the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations at Harvard University during the 2013-2014 academic year.

Teaching:

I teach theory mostly. I train students to think not only as theory critics but also as theorists. In addition to undergraduate and graduate courses on theory, I teach globalization, education, and collective memory.

Course Syllabi:

Spring 2013SOC 612 - Contemporary Sociological Theory View Syllabus

• SOC 321 - Sociological Theory View Syllabus
  

Advising:

I would be always happy to collaborate with graduate students who are interested in culture, politics, networks, cosmopolitanism, or East Asia.

In addition to my research as a sociologist, I work with educators and teachers in Japan to make social studies more cosmopolitan and problem-solving-oriented. I also volunteer for Friends of the Earth Japan to help their effort to create a more ecologically sustainable society.

Research:

Currently, I have two research projects at different stages of development:

(1) "Cosmopolitan Commemoration: Toward Resolving the History Problem in East Asia." Given its enormous human costs, the Asia-Pacific War continues to haunt Japan's relations with neighboring countries, especially South Korea and China, in the form of the "history problem"--a set of controversies over facts and interpretations of the war. In this book project, I examine how the history problem evolved from 1945 through 2011 by focusing on ways in which the people and governments of Japan, South Korea, and China tried to solve it. Based on my historical analysis, I show that the history problem resulted from a collision of nationalist commemorations and, over the last few decades, cosmopolitan commemoration has emerged as its solution, immanent in joint activities by the people and governments of the three countries.

(2) "Reassembling Political Ecology after Fukushima: Toward a New Articulation of Science and Democracy." The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident has created two urgent policy problems: how to deal with damages caused by the accident and how to reform Japan’s energy system. This project uses actor-network theory (ANT) to examine how politicians, bureaucrats, scientific experts, corporations, and NGOs in Japan as well as abroad have interacted with one another to shape the Japanese government’s policy responses to the two problems. This project conceptually builds on my first book project on the history problem in East Asia, i.e. how interactions among relevant political actors shape the government's action, while topically moving to questions about science, technology, and democracy in the context of the nuclear accident.

Interest(s):

Theory; Cosmopolitanism and Globalization; Science, Technology, and Democracy; Collective Memory; Education; Japan and East Asia

Publications:

Title: Reiterated Commemoration: Hiroshima as National Trauma (PDF) (2006)
Publication Information: Sociological Theory 24 (4): 353-376

Title: From Collective Memory to Commemoration (2010)
Publication Information: Pp. 619-628 in The Handbook of Cultural Sociology, edited by J. R. Hall, L. Grindstaff, & M.-C. Lo. New York: Routledge

Title: Actor-Network Theory of Cosmopolitan Education (PDF) (2010)
Publication Information: The Journal of Curriculum Studies 42 (3): 333-351

Title: An Actor-Network Theory of Cosmopolitanism (PDF) (2011)
Publication Information: Sociological Theory 29 (2): 124-49

Title: Cosmopolitan Nation-Building: The Institutional Contradiction and Politics of Postwar Japanese Education (PDF) (2011)
Publication Information: Social Science Japan Journal 14 (2): 125-44

Honors / Awards:

Postdoctoral Fellowship, Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, Harvard University (2013)

Best Graduate Student Paper Award, Culture Section, American Sociological Association (2007)

Best Graduate Student Paper Award, Political Sociology Section, American Sociological Association (2007)

Outstanding Graduate Student Mentor Award, Department of Sociology, University of Michigan (2009)

Phi Kappa Phi, University of Michigan (2009)

Social Science Research Council-Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Fellowship (2011)