Akiko Takenaka
Research Interests:
Modern Japanese History
gender
War and Memory
Visual Culture
Asian American History
Education
Ph.D. Yale University, 2004
Research
Professor Takenaka specializes in social and cultural history of modern Japan. Her research involves memory and historiography of the Asia-Pacific War, gender and peace activism, and history museums. Her teaching interests include gender, war and society, nationalism, memory studies, and visual culture. Prior to coming to UK, she has taught as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago and the University of Michigan.
Professor Takenaka is the author of two books. The first book, entitled Yasukuni Shrine: History, Memory, and Japan's Unending Postwar (University of Hawai'i Press, Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University, 2015), explores Yasukuni Shrine as a physical space, object of visual and spatial representation, and site of spatial practice in order to highlight the complexity of Yasukuni Shrine’s past and critique the official narratives that postwar debates have responded to. Her second book Mothers Against War: Gender, Motherhood, and Peace Activism in Cold War Japan (University of Hawai'i Press, 2025) examines the shifting relationships among motherhood, peace activism, and women's rights in the decades following Japan's defeat in 1945. It is the first scholarly monograph to make the connection between Japan's matricentric peace activism and the fight for women's rights. Research for this book has been funded by long-term research fellowships by Fulbright and the Japan Foundation.
Selected Publications:
Books
Mothers Against War: Gender, Motherhood, and Peace Activism in Cold War Japan (University of Hawai'i Press, 2025).
Yasukuni Shrine: History, Memory and Japan’s Unending Postwar (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, and Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute Series, Columbia University 2015).
Articles
- "Iijima Aiko (1932-2005): A Feminist's Fight Against Discrimination in Japan," in Francisca de Haas ed., The Palgrave Handbook of Communist Women Activists around the World (Palgrave, 2023), 327-398.
- “Aestheticizing Sacrifice: Media, Education, and Ritual during the Asia-Pacific War,” in Minh Nguyen ed., New Essays in Japanese Aesthetics (Lexington Books, Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), 179-191.
- “Mobilizing Death: Bodies and Spirits of the Modern Japanese War Dead,” in Paul Corner and Jie-Hyun Lim eds., Palgrave Handbook of Mass Dictatorship (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 351-363.
- “Gender and Postwar Relief: Support for War-Widowed Mothers in Post Asia-Pacific War Japan,” Gender and History 28.3 (November 2016), 775-793.
- "Collecting for Peace: Memories and Objects of the Asia-Pacific War," in Verge: Studies in Global Asias 1.2 (Fall 2015), 136-157.
- “The Construction of a Wartime National Identity: Japanese Pavilions in Paris and New York,” in Rika Devos, Alexander Ortenberg, and Vladimir Paperny eds., Architecture of World Expositions 1937-1958: Reckoning with Global War (Ashgate Publishing, 2015), 71-80.
- "Mobilizing Death in Imperial Japan: War and the Origins of the Myth of Yasukuni," in The Asia Pacific Journal vol.13 issue 38 no.2.
- "Memory, Trauma, Art," in Beyond Hiroshima: The Return of the Repressed--Wartime Memory in Contemporary Japanese Photography and Video Art (Tel Aviv University, 2015), 45-56.
- "Reactionary Nationalism and Museum Controversies: The Case of Peace Osaka," in The Public Historian 36.2 (May 2014): 75-98.
- “Politics of Representation or Representation of Politics? Yasukuni the Movie” in Review of Japanese Culture and Society (Winter 2009): 117-136.
- “Architecture for Mass-Mobilization: The Chūreitō Memorial Construction Movement, 1939-1945,” in Alan Tansman ed., The Culture of Japanese Fascism (Duke University Press, 2009), 235-253.
- “Enshrinement Politics: War Dead and War Criminals at Yasukuni Shrine,” in Japan Focus (posted June 7, 2007).
- “Exhibiting World War II in Japan and the United States,” in The Pacific Historical Review 76 (February 2007): 61-94 (with Laura Hein; revised version posted on Japan Focus on July 20, 2007.
- “Pan-Asianism vs. Changeless, Timeless Japan: The Construction of a Wartime National Identity,” in Thresholds 17 (Spring 1998): 63-68.
Opinion Pieces
- “Yasukuni Shrine and Japan’s War Responsibility,” Japan Today, September 3, 2015.
- “Japanese Should Embrace Activism as Apology,” East Asia Forum, August 5, 2015.
Interview
- New Books on East Asian Studies podcast (Posted August 2016)
- Professor
- Director, Global Asias Program
- Gender and Women's Studies
- History
- Japan Studies
- War & Gender Work Group
- Global Asias
1733 Patterson Office Tower
859.257.3584
takenaka_cv_F21.pdf
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Other Affiliations:
- Social Theory
- Historic Preservation (College of Design)
