The following Columbia faculty regularly offer courses related to premodern and early-modern Japan.

Michael Como is Fukami Assistant Professor of Shinto Studies in the Department of Religion.  His recent research has focused on the religious history of the Japanese islands from the Asuka through the early Heian periods.  His publications include several articles on the ritual and political consequences of the introduction of literacy, sericulture and horse-culture from the Asian sub-continent. He is also the author of Shotoku: Ethnicity, Ritual and Violence in the Formation of Japanese Buddhism (forthcoming in 2007) and Weaving and Binding: Female Shamans and Immigrant Gods in Nara Japan (forthcoming in 2008).  He is currently working on a new manuscript tentatively entitled "Resonant Bodies: Disease and Astrology in the Heian Cultic Revolution.”

Lewis Cook (lcoqc@qcvaxa.qc.edu) is Visiting Professor of Japanese Literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures.  His research in recent years has been devoted to editing and translating the textbooks of the so-called 'Secret Teachings of Ancient and Modern Poetry,' an institution for training teachers of poetry that flourished in late medieval Japan.  He has taught graduate seminars on Ise monogatari commentaries, waka poetry and poetics, and linked verse.

Matthew P. McKelway is Associate Professor of Japanese Art in the Department of Art History and Archaeology, specializing in painting in Kyoto from the 16th-18th century.  His research has focused on the relationship of urban representation and politics in late medieval Kyoto, and the development of genre painting in early modern Japan.  More recently he has expanded his interest in the early Kano workshop into two current book projects: a study of Sinological visuality in the work of the 17th century painter Kano Sansetsu, and an investigation of fan paintings as a medium for social intercourse and pictorial experimentation.  McKelway's courses include undergraduate surveys of Japanese art, graduate lectures and seminars on narrative handscrolls, visual arts of the Momoyama period, eccentricity in Edo-period painting, and independent studies in paleography.  His publications include: Capitalscapes: Folding Screens and Political Imagination in Late Medieval Kyoto (2006) and Traditions Unbound: Groundbreaking Painters from Eighteenth-Century Kyoto (2005).

Gregory Pflugfelder (gmp12@columbia.edu) is Associate Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and the Department of History.  His interests as a historian extend across all periods, focusing especially on issues of gender and sexuality.  He has recently taught courses on such topics as the historiography of premodern and early-modern Japan, the cultural history of monsters, Ihara Saikaku and the construction of gender and sexuality in Genroku Japan, representations of samurai, interspecies history, and the historical construction of masculinities.  His publications include "Strange Fates: Sex, Gender, and Sexuality in Torikaebaya Monogatari" (Monumenta Nipponica, 1992), Cartographies of Desire: Male-Male Sexuality in Japanese Discourse, 1600-1950 (1999), and Queer Archipelago: Historical Explorations in Japanese Gender and Sexuality (forthcoming).

Henry Smith (hds2@columbia.edu; http://www.columbia.edu/~hds2/) is Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and the Department of History.  He is interested in the history of Japanese urban culture from the later Edo period until the present, particularly as revealed in paintings, prints, buildings, publishing, maps, and city planning.  He is anxious to recruit students who cross the disciplinary boundaries of history, art history, architecture, and anthropology.  He teaches courses in nineteenth-century Japanese history, buildings and cities in Japanese history, the history of Tokyo, Edo culture, and Japanese bibliography.  Representative publications include Kiyochika: Artist of Meiji Japan (1988), Hiroshige, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (1986, rev. 2000), Taizanso and the One-Mat Room (1994), and "The History of the Book in Edo and Paris," in James McClain et al., eds., Edo and Paris (1994).

In addition to the above regular faculty, Columbia boasts the presence of such Emeritus/Emerita Professors as Donald Keene (Shincho Professor Emeritus of Japanese Literature) and Barbara Ruch (Professor Emerita), who are world-renowned for their contributions to premodern and early-modern Japan studies.  Professors Keene and Ruch are the guiding spirits, respectively, of the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture and the Institute for Medieval Japan Studies (see below).

Resources

The C. V. Starr East Asian Library (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/indiv/eastasian/) houses one of the largest collections of Japanese-language and Japan-related materials in North America.  In addition to books, periodicals, microfilms, films, videocassettes, and DVDs, its holdings include many rare manuscripts, woodblock prints (ukiyoe), and other objects from premodern and early-modern Japan.

The Institute for Medieval Japanese Studies (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ealac/imjs/), founded in 1968, is an international liaison and research center designed to serve scholars whose main area of study focuses on medieval Japan.  The Institute encourages research on all aspects of Japanese civilization related to the medieval period.  It hosts lectures, performances, symposia, and other events throughout the academic year.

Students of premodern and early-modern Japan at Columbia benefit from a superlative program in Japanese language, both modern and classical.  Modern Japanese is available up to the fifth-year level.  Instruction in the classical language encompasses Kobun, Kanbun, Sorobun, Hentaigana, and Komonjo Reading.

One of the unique advantages of studying at Columbia is its location in the heart of New York City, where a wealth of cultural opportunities is available to enhance the study of premodern and early-modern Japan.  The Metropolitan Museum of Art (http://www.metmuseum.org/) holds one of the country's finest collections of Japanese art objects, dating from the earliest times through the present, and lies only a short distance away from the Columbia campus.  The Japan Society (http://www.jpnsoc.org/) sponsors many Japan-related events throughout the year, as does the New York-based Asia Society (http://www.asiasociety.org/).  Finally, New York is home to a thriving community of Japanese businesses, individuals, and organizations, all of which combine to make the city an ideal place to study Japan and its culture.