Episode Details

Scholar Laura Miller will discuss with us Female Driven Culture in Japan, including examples of the Himiko (Shaman Queen of Ancient Japan or Wa) boom, hunting for female empowerment/spirituality spots, Cat cafes, Otome road where there are shops for female manga and costume play fans and demographic power: male beauty work and herbivore men. Laura Miller is Ei’ichi Shibusawa-Seigo Arai Endowed Professor of Japanese Studies and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She has published widely on Japanese culture and language, including topics such as English loanwords in Japanese, elevator girls, the beauty industry, girls’ slang, self-photography, and divination. She teaches courses on Japan and linguistic anthropology and works to promote Japan Studies through a variety of campus and community programming. She is the author or co-editr of four books on Japan. Beauty Up: Exploring Contemporary Japanese Body Aesthetics (University of California Press, 2006), Bad Girls of Japan (Palgrave, 2005) Manners and Mischief: Gender, Power, and Etiquette in Japan (University of California Press, 2011), and Modern Girls on the Go: Gender, Mobility, and Labor in Japan (Stanford University Press, 2013).