Home Page of Yukiko Kawahara, Asian Studies Program, University of Redlands

Yukiko Kawahara

Associate Professor of Asian Studies

Office: Hall of Letters #106
Phone: (909) 793-2121, ext. 2122
Fax: (909) 793-2029
E-mail: Yukiko_Kawahara@redlands.edu

A native of Japan, Dr. Yukiko Kawahara was a graduate of Hiroshima Jogakuin University. She then earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Oriental Studies at the University of Arizona, where she completed a dissertation on the transformation of local economy by the growth of silk production in modern Japan.

Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Redlands in 1999, Dr. Kawahara has had extensive teaching experience in Japanese language, history and culture at various institutions of higher learning in the United States and in Asia, including the University of Arizona, Indiana University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Northeast Missouri State University. She was also the coordinator of the Japanese language program while teaching at the State University of New York at Binghamton and Central Washington University. Besides the development of new approaches and strategies in the learning of Japanese, Dr. Kawahara is especially interested in teaching the popular culture of Japan.

Dr. Kawahara has published on a wide variety of subjects, including the impact of labor migration on rural Japanese women, Japanese literature as a source of women's social history, economic development and decline in Japan's periphery in the early modern and modern eras, and Japanese marketing strategies and consumer preferences in Hong Kong. She has conducted research focusing on the impact of local government policies and the expansion of sericulture on regional development and the improvement of rural living standards in 19th and 20th century Japan. Her article, "Silk Culture and Silk Reeling in Western Japan in the Late 19th and Early 20th Century," was published in The Journal of Asian History.

Dr. Kawahara was an economic development consultant for the Institute of Cultural Affairs Japan, an NGO dedicated to grassroots participation in long-term sustainable development. In that capacity she served as the coordinator for the construction of a water system and a solar dryer plant in the Philippines.

In 2002, Dr. Kawahara was awarded a fellowship by the ASIANetwork Freeman Student-Faculty Fellows Program for Collaborative Research in Asia. Her research project in collaboration with four Redlands students, entitled “Social and Cultural History of Japan through Music Education,” examines the impact of music education on the Japanese people, and the social and cultural history of Japan as reflected in the songs taught in schools. Field work in the summer of 2002 in Japan was followed by on-campus research during the academic year of 2002-2003, culminating in a multimedia CD-Rom including lyric translations, song recordings, biographies of poets and composers, and analysis of individual songs. Dr. Kawahara will expand on this research to develop a new course as well as a teaching packet and Web site for teachers of Japanese culture.