Literature

Tomi Suzuki

Tomi Suzuki

Professor of Japanese Literature, Faculty Curriculum Advisor

Office: 410 Kent Hall
Office Hours: On leave 2026-27
Phone: (212) 854-5034
Email: ts202@columbia.edu

Educational Background

BA: University of Tokyo (’74)
MA: University of Tokyo (’77)
PhD: Yale University (’88)

Classes Taught

AHUM UN3830: Colloquium on Modern East Asian Texts
JPNS GU4008: Readings in Classical Japanese: from Heian to Meiji
EAAS GU4810: Women and Literary Culture in Japan: from 10th century to the present
JPNS GR8020: Graduate Seminar in Modern Japanese Literature

Research Interests

Modern Japanese literature, especially 19th-and 20th-century narrative fiction and criticism in a comparative and transnational perspective; literary and cultural theory, particularly theory of narrative, genre and gender, modernism and modernity, translation and adaptation; intellectual history of modern Japan; linguistic thought and language education in 19th-and 20th-century Japan; history of reading, issues of canon formation and literary histories.

Professor Suzuki joined the department at Columbia University in 1996. She has published extensively in both the English and Japanese languages. Currently, Tomi Suzuki is completing a book entitled Gender, Literary Culture, and Nation in Japan: 1880s-1950s, which investigates the formation of the literary field from the late nineteenth century to the postwar period in relationship to the process of nation building, gender construction, journalism, language reform and education. It explores the modernist construction and questioning of Japanese linguistic and cultural traditions in a transnational context. She co-edited The Cambridge History of Japanese Literature. She is now co-editing a volume entitled Rethinking Authorship in Comparative and Historical Perspectives: Transmission, Ownership, and Collectivity (forthcoming). The Japanese edition was published by Iwanami Shoten in 2021.

Selected Publications

Gender, Literary Culture, and Nation in Japan: 1880s-1950s (forthcoming).

Narrating the Self: Fictions of Japanese Modernity, Stanford University Press, 1996 [Japanese translation, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2000; Korean translation, Seoul: Saengak-ui-namu Publishing, 2004]

What is an Author?: Transmission, Ownership, and Collectivity (<Sakusha> to wa nani ka: keishō,senyū, kyōdōsei), Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2021 (co-editor)

Cambridge History of Japanese Literature, Cambridge University Press, 2016 (co-editor)

Censorship, Media, and Literary Culture in Japan (Bilingual Edition), Tokyo: Shin’yōsha, 2012 (co-editor)

Inventing the Classics: Modernity, National Identity, and Japanese Literature, Stanford University Press, 2000 (co-editor)

Sôzôsareta koten: kanon keisei, kokumin kokka, nihon bungaku (Invented Classics: Canon Formation, Nation-State, and Japanese Literature), Tokyo: Shin’yôsha, 1999 (co-editor) [Korean translation, Seoul: Somyong Publishing Co, 2002; Chinese translation, Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2021]

Haruo Shirane

Haruo Shirane

Shincho Professor of Japanese Literature, Vice Chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Faculty Director of the Donald Keene Center

Office: 420 Kent Hall
Office Hours: On leave for the 2026-2027 academic year
Phone: (212) 854-5031
Email: hs14@columbia.edu

Educational Background

BA: Columbia College (’74)
MA: University of Michigan (’77)
PhD: Columbia University (’83)

Classes Taught

JPNS GU4007 Introduction to Classical Japanese
JPNS GR8040 Graduate Seminar in Premodern Japanese Literature

Research Interests

Japanese Literature, Print Culture, Performance and Media

Haruo Shirane, Shincho Professor of Japanese Literature and Culture and chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University, teaches and writes on premodern and early modern Japanese literature and culture, with particular interest in prose fiction, poetry, performative genres (such as storytelling and theater), and visual culture. He is finishing a book called Media, Performance, and Play: Japanese Culture from Outside In, which focuses on the role of manuscript culture, media, vocality, and performance, viewing cultural processes from the social periphery. Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons (Columbia University Press, 2012) explored the cultural constructions of nature across a wide spectrum of literature, media, and visual arts from the ancient period to the modern. Most recently, he has coedited Monsters, Animals, and Other Worlds: A Collection of Short Medieval Tales (Columbia University Press, 2018); Reading The Tale of Genji: The First Millennium(Columbia University Press, 2015); and Cambridge History of Japanese Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2015).

Haruo Shirane has been engaged in bringing new approaches to the study of Japanese literary culture. This has resulted in Japanese Literature and Literary Theory (Nihon bungaku kara no hihyo riron, Kasama shoin, 2009, edited with Fujii Sadakazu and Matsui Kenji) and New Horizons in Japanese Literary Studies (Bensei Publishing, 2009), both of which explore new issues and methodologies in the study of print and literary culture. He also edited Food in Japanese Literature (Shibundo, 2008), Overseas Studies on The Tale of Genji (Ofu, 2008) and Envisioning The Tale of Genji: Media, Gender, and Cultural Production (Columbia University Press, 2008). The latter two books analyze the impact of The Tale of Genji on Japanese cultural history in multiple genres and historical periods.

Haruo Shirane translated and edited a number of volumes on Japanese literature. These include Classical Japanese Literature, An Anthology: Beginnings to 1600 (Columbia University Press, 2006), Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600-1900 (Columbia University Press, 2002; abridged edition, 2008), The Tales of the Heike (Columbia University Press, 2006, paperback 2008), and The Demon at Agi Bridge and Other Japanese Tales (Columbia University Press, 2010), a collection of setsuwa (anecdotal literature).

He is also deeply involved with the history of Japanese language and pedagogical needs and have written Classical Japanese Reader and Essential Dictionary (2007) and Classical Japanese: A Grammar (Columbia University Press, 2005).

Haruo Shirane is the recipient of Fulbright, Japan Foundation, SSRC, NEH, and Hakuhodo grants, and has been awarded the Kadokawa Genyoshi Prize, Ishida Hakyo Prize, and most recently the Ueno Satsuki Memorial prize (2010) for outstanding research on Japanese culture. He is presently the Chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures.

Professor’s Shirane’s personal website

Selected Publications

Cambridge History of Japanese Literature (chief editor, Cambridge, 2015)

Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons (Columbia, 2012)

Inventing the Classics: Modernity, National Identity, and Japanese Literature (co-editor with Tomi Suzuki, 2001).

Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Bashô (Stanford, 1998)

The Bridge of Dreams: A Poetics of the Tale of Genji (Stanford, 1987)

Wei Shang

Wei Shang

Du Family Professor of Chinese Culture

Office: 404 Kent Hall
Office Hours: TBD
Phone: (212) 854-1526
Email: ws110@columbia.edu

Educational Background

BA: Peking University (’82)
MA: Peking University (’84)
PhD: Harvard University (’95)

Classes Taught

AHUM UN1400 Colloquium on Major Texts: East Asia
CHNS GU4507 Readings in Classical Chinese
EAAS GR8030 Pre-Modern Chinese Fiction

Research Interests

Pre-modern Chinese Literature, Cultural and Intellectual History with special attention to Fiction and Drama of the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1911).

Professor Wei Shang specializes in pre-modern Chinese literature and culture, especially the fiction and drama of the Ming and Qing dynasties. His research interests also include print culture, book history and intellectual history of the same period. His book “Rulin Waishi” and Cultural Transformation in Late Imperial China (2003) addresses the role of Confucian ritualism and fiction in shaping the intellectual and cultural changes of the eighteenth century. His other publications are concerned with Jin Ping Mei Cihua (The Plum in the Golden Vase), late Ming culture, fiction commentary, and medieval poetry, including Writing on Landmarks: From Yellow Crane Tower to Phoenix Pavilion (2020). He is the editor and co-editor of several volumes in both English and Chinese, and a contributor to The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature (2010).

Selected Publications

Books:

江山勝跡：人文風景的建構與傳承 Cultural Landscape: Its Construction and Transformation, co-edited with Xiao Han. Beijing University Press, 2025, 299 pages.

Rulin Waishi and Cultural Transformation in Late Imperial China. Harvard University Asian Center, 2003.

Writing on Landmarks: From Yellow Crane Tower to Phoenix Pavilion (Tixie mingsheng: cong huanghe lou dao fenghuang tai). Beijing: Sanlian Publishing House, 2020.

Old-Style Prose: An Annotated Anthology for Young Readers (Gei haizi de guwen). Beijing: Moveable Type, 2019.

Dynastic Crisis and Cultural Innovation: From the Late Ming to the Late Qing and Beyond (co-edited with David Der-wei Wang). Harvard University Asian Center, 2005.

A special issue of Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture: Literature and Visual Culture in Early Modern China (co-edited with Xingpei Yuan), Duke University Press, 2015.

Articles:

 “Theatrical Performance and Spectatorship in Dramatic Sanqu Writings Modeled on Zaban: From “The Country Pumpkin Knows Naught of the Theater” to “Gaozu Returns to His Hometown”, in Literature & Art Studies 文藝研究, 2025 (5): 5-37.

“Reflecting on the May-Fourth ‘Vernacularization Movement’: Discourse, Practice, and Historical Significance.” 國際漢學研究通訊 Newsletter for International China Studies, 2024 (28): 3-99.

“A Place Made Well Known by a Poem: Ji (跡）and Wen (文）in Landscape Poetry.” The Journal of Peking University, 2023 (5): 99-112.

“The Emergence of the Novel: From Outlaws of the Marsh to The Plum in the Golden Vase.” Approaches to Teaching The Plum in the Golden Vase (ed., Andrew Schonebaum). Modern Language Association of America, New York, 2022, pp. 310-327.

“Para-text and Narrative Time of Rulin Waishi.” Wenxue yichan 文學遺產 (Literary Heritage), 2021 (6): 4-16.

“On Rulin Waishi‘s Original Edition and Other Related Issues.” Gudian wenxue qianyan yu pinglun 古典文學前沿與評論 (Frontiers and Review of the Classical Chinese Literary Study), 2021 (2): 199-220.

A review article: “Toward a Theory of Traditional Chinese Theater and Performance Arts: A Review of A Remarkable Game: What is so Great about Peking Opera.” Wenyi yanjiu 文藝研究 (Literature and Art Studies), 2022 (4): 151-164.

“Fictional Performances: Royal Birthday Ceremonies and the Self-Imagination of the Empire in Yesou puyan”. Literary Heritage (Wenxue yichan), no. 3, 2017: 155-167.

“The Formation of a Poly-textual Novel:  From The Water Margin to The Plum in the Golden Vase”. The Journal of Fudan University, no. 5, 2016: 31-58.

“A Lively Illusion: Occidental Lens, Linear Perspective, and the Phantom of the Grand Prospect Garden” (I, II, III). Studies of Cao Xueqin (Cao Xueqin yanjiu), no. 1, 2, 3, 2016: 95-117 (I); 103-123 (II); 38-62 (III).

“Truth Becomes Fiction When Fiction is True: The Story of the Stone and the Visual Culture of the Manchu Court”.  A special issue of Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture: Literature and Visual Culture in Early Modern China, October 2015: 207-248.

“Writing and Speech: Rethinking the Issue of Vernaculars in Early Modern China”, Rethinking East Asian Languages, Vernaculars, and Literacies, 1000-1919 (edited by Benjamin Elman). Brill: Leiden/Boston, 2014: 254-301.