Masamichi (Marro) Inoue

Research Interests:
cultural anthropology
Cultural studies
Japan
Okinawa
the U.S.
Education

Ph.D., Duke University, 1999 (Cultural Anthropology)

Research and Teaching

Trained as a cultural anthropologist, Inoue has been conducting fieldwork-based ethnographic projects on several fronts. For instance, he has been exploring U.S. military base issues in Okinawa (Japan's southernmost prefecture) ethnographically and historically over the years. His second book on this subject was published in February 2025 https://press.umich.edu/Books/T/The-Community-of-Nuchi-Du-Takara-Life-Is-the-Ultimate-Treasure-in-Postwar-Okinawa2. He has also carried out fieldwork-based ethnographic research about campus policing in the United States. Furthermore, Inoue is prepared for launching a new ethnographic project on the Orthodox Church in Japan. He has taught a wide range of courses, including Japanese language courses, Japanese cultural studies courses, fieldwork-based ethnographic writing courses, and a connected course for the International Village Living Learning Program of which he has served as faculty director since Fall 2020.

 

Selected Publications:
  • 2025: The Community of Nuchi Du Takara ("Life Is the Ultimate Treasure") in Postwar Okinawa: Local Subjectivity within and against Empire. University of Michigan Press. https://press.umich.edu/Books/T/The-Community-of-Nuchi-Du-Takara-Life-Is-the-Ultimate-Treasure-in-Postwar-Okinawa2
  • 2019: “Between Surveillance and Sousveillance: Or, Why Campus Police Feel Vulnerable Precisely Because They Gain Power.”Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 49(2): 229-256.    https://journals.sagepub.com/eprint/IY7RQBPQEAKF6EGNDFYG/full
  • 2017: "On the Okinawan Multitude: Toward a New Policy Paradigm for Reorganization-Reduction of the U.S. Bases in Okinawa." Georgetown Journal of Asian Affairs 3(2):47-57.
  • 2017:  Okinawa and the U.S. Military: Identity Making in the Age of Globalization, with a New Preface. New York: Columbia University Press. (This is a paperback edition of the book published in hardcover originally in 2007. A new preface [25 pages] is added to this paperback edition.)
  • 2014: "アジールとしての「日本」：アメリカの大学キャンパスにおけるオリエンタリズムの変容と解体 [”Japan” as a Sanctuary:  Transformation and Dissolution of Orientalism on a University Campus in the U.S.] 文化人類学 [Japanese Journal of Cultural Anthropology] 79(1): 25-47.
  • 2013: "生権力の臨界ーーアメリカの大学警察を人類学する［The Critical State of Biopower: Anthropologizing a University Police Department in the United States］”　文化人類学　[Japanese Journal of Cultural Anthropology] 77(4): 499-522
  • 2012: “Reclaiming the Universal: Intercultural Subjectivity in the Life and Work of Endo Shusaku.” Southeast Review of Asian Studies (SERAS) 34: 153-170.  
  • 2011: “Cocco’s musical intervention in the US base problems: traversing a realm of everyday cultural sensibilities in Okinawa.”  Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 12:3, 321-340.
  • 2007: Okinawa and the U.S. Military: Identity Making in the Age of Globalization. New York: Columbia University Press.
  • 2004: “‘We are Okinawans but of a Different Kind’: New/Old Social Movements and the U.S. Military in Okinawa.” Current Anthropology 45 (1): 85-104.
  • 2004:  “当事者の共同体、権力、市民の公共空間ーー流用論の新しい階梯と沖縄基地問題 [The Community of Subjects, Power, and the Public-Sphere of Citizens: A New Stage of the Theory of Appropriation and the U.S. Base Problems in Okinawa].” 民族学研究 [Ethnological Inquiry] 68 (4): 534-554.
  • 2002: “グローバル化のなかの 「沖繩イニシアティブ」 論争―記憶、アイデンティティ、基地問題 [The Debate over the ‘Okinawa Initiative’ in the Age of Globalization: Memory, Identity, and the U.S. Base Problems].” 思想 [Thought] 933: 246-267.
  • 1998: “海上ヘリ基地問題と日本人類学ーー沖縄県名護市辺野古でのフィールドワークの覚え書き  [The Offshore Base Dispute and Japanese Anthropology: Notes from the Field in Henoko, Nago City, Okinawa].”  現代思想  [Modern Thought] 26 (7): 228-244.
  • 1997: Inoue, Masamichi, S., John Purves, and Mark Selden. “Okinawa Citizens, U.S. Bases, and the Dugong.”  Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 29 (4): 82-86.