Professor Jennifer Coates
School of East Asian Studies
Professor in Japanese Studies
Full contact details
School of East Asian Studies
Jessop West
1 Upper Hanover Street
Sheffield
S3 7RA
- Profile
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I am a Professor of Japanese Studies at the School of East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield. My books include Making Icons: Repetition and the Female Image in Japanese Cinema, 1945-1964 (Hong Kong University Press, 2016) and Film Viewing in Postwar Japan, 1945-1968: An Ethnographic Study (Edinburgh University Press, 2022), as well as co-edited volumes Japanese Visual Media: Politicizing the Screen (Routledge, 2021 with Ben-Ari, E.) and The Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture (Routledge, 2019 with Fraser, L., and Pendleton, M.).
I am an AHRC Innovation Scholar and recipient of the 2021 Philip Leverhulme Prize for Visual and Performing Arts. My wider research interests include Japanese and East Asian cinema, photography, gender studies, filmmaking, and ethnographic methods. Before joining SEAS, I studied, researched, and taught in many areas of the world: as an AHRC Kluge Fellow at the Library of Congress, Washington D.C. (2012), a Visiting Research Fellow at the Australian National University (2011), Assistant Professor at the Hakubi Center for Advanced Research, Kyoto University (2014-2018), and Senior Lecturer in Japanese Arts, Cultures, and Heritage at the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures at the University of East Anglia.
- Qualifications
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MA (University of Glasgow), MA (SOAS, University of London), PhD (SOAS, University of London)
- Research interests
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My research and teaching is situated at the intersection of Japanese Studies, Film Studies, History, History of Art, and Anthropology, and can best be characterized as Japanese Cultural Studies. My work takes an interdisciplinary approach drawing from ethnography, art history, and museum studies as well as film studies. I use Japanese language and visual communications in my research practice and dissemination, with training in research-led filmmaking which resulted in a short documentary film on postwar cinema culture (When Cinema Was King, 2018). My collaborative research and editorship includes work in the fields of memory studies, gender studies, and politics, as well as pedagogy.
I am currently working on a project titled "'Japan' Outside Japan: Celebrity, Star Persona, and Curatorship in the Transmission of Japanese Arts and Cultures" funded by the Philip Leverhulme Prize. This project explores the use of a persona studies approach for understanding the perception and consumption of Japanese cultures outside Japan. Under an AHRC Innovation Scholars award I am currently partially seconded to Takero Shimazaki Architects to undertake research on "‘Japan’ in the Built Environment."
- Publications
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Books
- Film viewing in postwar Japan, 1945-1968: an ethnographic study. Edinburgh University Press. View this article in WRRO
- Making icons : repetition and the female image in Japanese cinema, 1945–1964. Hong Kong University Press. View this article in WRRO
Edited books
- War Memory and East Asian Conflicts, 1930–1945. Palgrave Macmillan. View this article in WRRO
- Japanese visual media : politicizing the screen. Abingdon: Routledge. View this article in WRRO
- The Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture. Routledge.
Journal articles
- Ageing, personhood and care in Chie Hayakawa’s Plan 75 (2022). Screen, 65(3), 352-372.
- Voices from an Unusual Archive: University Film Circle Writings, 1945-1960. Asia-Pacific Journal : Japan Focus, 21(6).
- Tsuchi: Earthy Materials in Contemporary Japanese Art. The Journal of Asian Studies.
- Suzuki Seijun and Postwar Japanese Cinema. JAPAN REVIEW, 38, 246-248.
- Maiko masquerade: crafting geisha girlhood in Japan. Journal of Gender Studies.
- Powers of the Real: Cinema, Gender, and Emotion in Interwar Japan by Diane Wei Lewis. Technology and Culture, 63(3), 910-911.
- Back to the Future: Imaginaries of Africa on East Asian Screens. Open Screens, 4(1).
- Rethinking the Young Female Cinema Audience: Postwar Cinema-Going in Kansai, 1945-1952. U.S.-Japan Women's Journal, 54, 6-28. View this article in WRRO
- Introduction: Representing Youth and Gender in Japanese Popular Culture. US-Japan Women's Journal, 54(1), 3-5. View this article in WRRO
- Quietly Critical: Ten Years Japan. Frames Cinema Journal, 15. View this article in WRRO
- Blurred boundaries : ethnofiction and its impact on postwar Japanese cinema. Arts, 8(1). View this article in WRRO
- Journeys from the east: The popular geopolitics of film motivated Chinese tourism. International Journal of Tourism Anthropology, 6(3), 219-236. View this article in WRRO
- Setsuko Hara vs. the Press: The Post-war Trolling of a Wartime Icon. Frames Cinema Journal, 13. View this article in WRRO
- Circular thinking: the Yamanote line on film. Japan Forum, 30(2), 224-239. View this article in WRRO
- Mediating memory: Shōjo and war memory in classical narrative Japanese cinema. Cultural Studies, 32(1), 105-125. View this article in WRRO
- The fragmented family on film: Kinoshita Keisuke's Nihon no Higeki (The Tragedy of Japan) (1953) and the antecedents of the contemporary fragmented family in Japan. Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, 40. View this article in WRRO
- Gambling with the nation : heroines of the Japanese yakuza film, 1955–1975. Japanese Studies, 37(3), 353-369. View this article in WRRO
- Socializing the audience: Going to the cinema in post-war Japan. Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies, 14(2), 590-607. View this article in WRRO
- How to Be a Domestic Goddess: Female Film Stars and the Housewife Role in Postwar Japan. U.S.-Japan Women's Journal, 50(1), 29-53.
- The Shape-Shifting Diva: Yamaguchi Yoshiko and the National Body. Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, 6(1), 23-38.
- Victims and bystanders: Women in the Japanese war-retro film. Media, War & Conflict, 6(3), 233-248.
Chapters
- Cultural Intermediaries in East Asian Film Industries In Ben Ari E & Wong H-W (Ed.), Cultural Intermediaries in East Asian Film Industries, (pp. 52-71). London: Routledge.
- Introduction: Engaging with War Memory and the Legacies of East Asian Conflicts, 1930-1945 In Coates J & Buchheim E (Ed.), War Memory and East Asian Conflicts, 1930–1945 Palgrave Macmillan
- Re-Presenting Sino-Japanese Relations through Flavors of Youth, TRANSNATIONAL EAST ASIAN STUDIES (pp. 169-183).
- The Pan-Asian 'Miss Granny' Phenomenon, EAST ASIAN FILM REMAKES (pp. 272-290).
- Female Stardom and National Identity in Postwar Japan (pp. 316-333). Wiley
- Japanese Visual Media Politicizing the Screen Introduction, JAPANESE VISUAL MEDIA (pp. 1-12).
- Representing Japan: Stereotyping and self-stereotyping in the many careers of Yamaguchi Yoshiko, Capture Japan: Visual Culture and the Global Imagination from 1952 to the Present (pp. 224-244).
- Audiences as cultural intermediaries, Cultural Intermediaries in East Asian Film Industries (pp. 52-71). Routledge
- Politicizing the audience? Film fans’ experiences of cinema in the 1960s In Coates J (Ed.), Japanese Visual Media: Politicizing the Screen (pp. 180-200). London: Routledge.
- Cultural memories of occupation in the Japanese cinema theatre, 1945-52. In Taylor J (Ed.), Visual Histories of Occupation: A Transcultural Dialogue (pp. 75-96). London: Bloomsbury Academic.
- Creativity at the margins in the ‘Golden Age’ of Japanese cinema (1945–1965) In Otmazgin N & Ben-Ari E (Ed.), Creative Context : Creativity and Innovation in the Media and Cultural Industries (pp. 101-117). Springer View this article in WRRO
- The Yakuza Film: A Genre 'Endorsed by the People' In Phillips A & Fujiki H (Ed.), The Japanese Cinema Book (pp. 348-360). London: British Film Institute. View this article in WRRO
- Bodies in the Dark: The Postwar Cinema Audience and the Body as ‘Ground Zero’ In Holca I & SĂPUNARU TĂMAŞ C (Ed.), Forms of the Body in Contemporary Japanese Society, Literature, and Culture (pp. 237-257). Lexington View this article in WRRO
- Gender and culture in Japan today INTRODUCTION, ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO GENDER AND JAPANESE CULTURE (pp. 1-7).
- Introduction: Gender and culture in Japan today In Coates J, Fraser L & Pendleton M (Ed.), The Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture (pp. 1-7). Routledge View this article in WRRO
- Gender in digital technologies and cultures In Coates J, Pendleton M & Fraser L (Ed.), The Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture (pp. 240-250). Routledge View this article in WRRO
- The Making of an Auteur: The Early Films (1958-1959), Killers, Clients and Kindred Spirits: The Taboo Cinema of Shohei Imamura (pp. 21-40). Edinburgh University Press View this article in WRRO
- Alternative Viewership Practices in Kyoto, Japan, The Palgrave Handbook of Asian Cinema (pp. 221-241). Palgrave Macmillan, London
- 時を超えて出会いは再び訪れる:李香蘭／山口淑子／シャーリー・ヤマ グチ In Wada I & Katsura K (Ed.), 他者との邂逅は何をもたらすのか: 「異文化接触」を再考する (pp. 18-48). Showado
- Pleasures of Recognition and Mediation in the Spectacle of the Nation In Drummond P (Ed.), The London Film and Media Reader 3: The Pleasures of the Spectacle The London Symposium
Book reviews
- Promiscuous Media: Film and Visual Culture in Imperial Japan, 1926–1945 by Hikari Hori. The Journal of Japanese Studies, 45(2), 415-419. View this article in WRRO
- Modern Girls on the Go: Gender, Mobility and Labor in Japan. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 15(1), 94-96.
- Noriko J. Horiguchi, Women Adrift: The Literature of Japan's Imperial Body (Review). Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, 30.
- Scripted Affects, Branded Selves: Television, Subjectivity and Capitalism in 1990s Japan. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 13(3), 299-301.
- Film viewing in postwar Japan, 1945-1968: an ethnographic study. Edinburgh University Press. View this article in WRRO
- Teaching activities
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On leave until 2025.