Hirokazu Toeda

Professor Hirokazu Toeda will join the Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies during the spring quarter of the 2014–15 academic year, as the tenth Terasaki Chair in U.S.-Japan Relations. The rotating chair brings to campus experts in the field of Japanese studies and U.S.-Japan relations, including, in recent years, Professor Shinji Yamashita from Tokyo University, Hiroko Hara from Josai International University, UCSD Professor Stefan Tanaka, Tokyo University, and Professor of Law Daniel Foote, Kanagawa University.

Dr. Hirokazu Toeda is Professor in the School of Letters, Arts, and Sciences at Waseda University. He also serves as Dean of the Cultural Affairs Division at Waseda. With more than 100 publications, Dr. Toeda’s research interests revolve around relations between the publishing and film industries and literary production in the 20th century. During the 1920s to the 1950s, Japan witnessed a remarkable development of publishing houses as well as the advent of the film industry. Through his meticulous and extensive archival research, Professor Toeda addresses questions of the production, modification, and canonization of literary works as well as the process of literati gaining positions as cultural figures during this period. Since the literary capital was centralized in Tokyo, his research also deals with the projection of urban space onto literary works. He recently edited Kindai bungaku sōkō genkō kenkyū jiten [The Encyclopedia of Research on Drafts and Manuscripts in Modern Literature] (Nihon Kindai Bungakukan, 2015). Additionally, Professor Toeda has been working on the issue of censorship during the Allied Occupation period. Based on extensive research in the Gordon W. Prange Collection, Professor Toeda edited Senryōki zasshi shiryō taikei: bungaku hen 1-5 [Compendium of Materials on Occupation-Period Journals: Literature Edition, vols. 1-5] (Iwanami Shoten, 2009 – 2010), which includes various censored literary articles published in magazines during the Occupation period with reference to the detail of censorship on each article. He also edited Censorship, Media, and Literary Culture in Japan: From Edo to Postwar (Shinyōsha, 2012). At UCLA he will teach a graduate seminar on media, urban space, and literary texts in modern Japan.