Research Strengths

Research strengths in the Japanese Studies department include:

• Contemporary social and political issues in Japan
• Modern Japanese history, particularly pre-1945 twentieth century social and political history
• Japanese intellectual history
• Political philosophy
• Modern Japanese poetry, comparative literature, and Australian literature
• Modern and contemporary Japanese fiction and literary theory
• Japanese cinema
• Japanese linguistics
• Language use in socio-cultural context
• Media and cultural studies: language and culture, language and gender, youth culture, popular culture in Japan
• Transnational media culture in Asia
• Chinese community in Australia and Japan
• Japan’s image among Chinese
• Japan-China relationships, comparative study of Asian societies; class, gender, ethnicity, community and globalization in Asian societies
• 14th and 15th-century Japanese urban history
• Premodern temple and residential architecture
• Spatial theory: “Spatial-Structural History”
• State-Monastic relations

The Inoue Yasushi Award

The Inoue Yasushi Award for Outstanding Research in Japanese Literature in Australia and New Zealand was inaugurated for 5 years in 2007, and is awarded annually for the best refereed journal article or book chapter published in English during the previous year by a researcher based in Australia or, from 2010, New Zealand. The recipient receives $1000 as well as a certificate of the award’s conferral.

Inoue Yasushi was a prominent post-Second World War novelist and poet. He wrote in many genres ranging from contemporary novels focusing on social problems to historical novels. He was a unique writer who managed to combine serious themes with fascinating and intriguing plots. Inoue’s works are still very popular, reaching a wide general readership as well as scholars and intellectuals. The Inoue Yasushi Memorial Foundation established the award in order to encourage Australian interest in Japanese literature generally, and in Inoue Yasushi more particularly. The Foundation also generously donated 28 volumes of Inoue Yasushi’s collected works, which can be found in the East Asian Collection of Fisher Library at the University of Sydney.

How to apply

Applicants for the 2012 award should submit an electronic copy of their works by 31 March 2012. In-press articles and book chapters that will bear the publication year of 2011 will be accepted with evidence.

Submissions should be sent to the Chair of the award selection committee, to the Chair of the award selection committee, Dr Mats Karlsson, at:

Previous winners

• 2007 (inaugural prize)
  Dr Tomoko Aoyama, University of Queensland
  “Appropriating Bush Tucker: Food in Inoue Hisashi’s Yellow Rats”, article published in the Journal of Australian Studies, 2006.
• 2008
  Dr Roman Rosenbaum, University of Sydney
  “The ‘Generation of the Burnt-out Ruins’”, article published in Japanese Studies, 2007.
• 2009
  Dr Ian McArthur, University of Sydney
  “Narrating the Law in Japan: Rakugo in the Meiji Law Reform Debate,” article published in the Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies.
• 2010
  Dr Mats Karlsson, University of Sydney
  “Writing Madness: Deranged Impressions in Akutagawa’s Cogwheels and Strindberg’s Inferno”, article published in Comparative Literature Studies in 2009 (volume 46, no 4).
• 2011
  Dr Vera Mackie, University of Wollongong
  "Reading Lolita in Japan", chapter in Girl Reading Girl in Japan (London: Routledge, 2010)