Profile

View my CV.

Academic Positions:

• Professor, Intercultural Research Institute, Kansai Gaidai University (2023-present)
• Professor Emeritus, Kyoto University
• Professor, Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University (2005-2023)
• Guest Lecturer, Heidelberg University (April 30-May27, 2023)
• Visiting Professor to be, UC Los Angeles (Fall and Winter 2023-2024)
• Adjunct Senior Research Scientist at Columbia University (2018-present)
• Visiting Professor, Dept. of Anthropology, MIT (2005-2006)
• Lecturer, Asian American Studies Program, UC Santa Barbara (1990)
• Professor, Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University (1999-2023, Promoted to Professor in 2005)
• Affiliate Professor of Dept. of Sociology, Kyoto University (2000-present)
• Visiting Scholar, Harvard University (Fall, 2015)
• Visiting Scholar, University of California, Santa Barbara (Winter, 2016)
• Affiliate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Washington
• Assistant to the Executive Vice President, Office of Public Relations and Strategic Planning of Kyoto University (2010-2013)

Project leader

‘Integrated Research into the Processes and Mechanisms of Racialization’ (Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (S) by the Ministry of Education and Science), 2016-2022.

‘A Japan-based Global Study of Racial Representations’ (Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (S) by the Ministry of Education and Science), 2010-2016.

Research Interests

Areas of Expertise:

Cultural Anthropology, Sociology, American Studies

Fields of Research Interest:

race, ethnicity, immigration studies

Regional Expertise:

U.S.A., Japan

Academic Background:

Ph. D. Anthropology (University of Washington, Fulbright Scholar).

Current Research

My specialist interests are theories of race and ethnicity, which is a development from my earlier studies on Japanese American ethnicity, pan-Asian ethnicity, and African American community organizations. Leading the collaborative research project on the global study of racial representations has broadened my areas of interest to include not only other fields of the humanities but also genetics and physical anthropology. Whilst interdisciplinary oriented, I have kept my fundamental interest as an anthropologist: to understand human-beings, anthropos, as well as to explore the ways in which ‘differences’ are perceived across cultures from comparative perspectives. Focusing on ‘race’ enables me to pursue these anthropological themes by examining the ways in which people are classified and differentiated.

Major Publications (in English)

• Breaking the Silence: Ethnicity and Redress among Japanese Americans. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995.
• Yasuko Takezawa and Akio Tanabe eds. Race and Migration in the Transpacific. London: Routledge (Open Access).
• Trans-Pacific Japanese American Studies: Dialogues on Race and Racializations (Yasuko Takezawa and Gary Y. Okihiro eds.) Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2016.
• Yasuko Takezawa ed., Racial Representations in Asia. Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, 2011.
• Yasuko Takezawa and Jean-Frédéric Schaub eds. Special Issue: Race as an object of social sciences, Politika (EHESS), L’École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), 2021 (Open Access).
• La race objet des sciences sociales. L’École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) Guest editors: Yasuko Takezawa et Jean-Frédéric Schaub, 2021 (Open Access).
• “Special Issue on Genetics, DTC, and Their Social Implications,” Anthropological Science, 131:1, 2023 (Open Access).
• “Theorizing People of Mixed Race in the Pacific and the Atlantic,”Social Sciences 11(3), 124, 2022 (Open Access).
• “Social Issues and the Role of Anthropology in Contemporary Japan,” Pathways to Anthropological Futures, Wenner-Gren Foundation online, 2022 (Open Access).
• Japan’s Modernization and Self Construction Between White and Yellow, The Routledge Critical Whiteness Studies Handbook, London: Routledge, 2021.
• “Translating and Transforming ‘Race’: Early Meiji Period Textbooks,” Japanese Studies, 35:1, Special Issue: Rethinking Race/Racism from Asian Experiences, 2015 (Open Access).
• Trans-Pacific Minor Visions in Japanese Diasporic Art (Special issue). Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas (ADVA), 6:1 (Yasuko Takezawa & Laura Kina eds.) 2020
• “Race in Asia” “Japan’s Minority Groups” in Encyclopedia Britannica’s Guide to Black History, 2010.
• “Nikkeijin and ‘Multicultural Coexistence’ in Japan: Kobe after the Great Earthquake,” in New Worlds, New Lives: Globalization and People of Japanese Descent in the Americas and from Latin America in Japan, Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, et.al., Stanford University Press,.pp.310-330, 2002.
• “Racial Boundaries and Stereotypes: An Analysis of American Advertising,” The Japanese Journal of American Studies 10, pp.77-106, 1999.
• “Children of Inmates: The Effects of the Redress Movement among the Third Generation Japanese Americans,” Qualitative Sociology 14(1): 39-56, 1991.

See a full list of publications.

Teaching

Courses taught in the U.S.

Courses taught as a teaching associate/teaching assistant at the University of Washington are not listed here.

Courses Taught at Kyoto University

Due to the administrative work for the President Office, I am currently offering only one course aside from some team teaching courses.

Contact

• Email address: takezawa.yasuko.2u[at mark]kyoto-u.jp (permanent address)
• Address: Intercultural Research Center, Kansai Gaidai University
• Nakamiya Higashinocho, Hirakata-City, Osaka 573-1001 Japan