Janice Matsumura

Professor
Office: AQ 6008
Email: jmatsumu@sfu.ca

Areas of Study: ASIA

Courses

Fall 2024

Spring 2025

This instructor is currently not teaching any courses.

Biography

Ph.D, History, York University, Canada M.A., History, York University M.A., East Asian Studies, University of Toronto B.A., General Honours, University of Toronto.

Research Interests

Japanese psychiatric profession, Japanese thought control/internal security system.

Books

Articles

  • “In Defense of Prewar Japan: Promoting the Past in Studies of Crime during the Asia-Pacific War and Allied Occupation,” Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 49, No. 2: 2023, 303–327 .
  • “Chapter 5: The Second Sino-Japanese War, Propaganda, and Medical Publications: Kaneko Junji’s ‘The China Incident from the Perspective of Psychiatry,” in Translating the Occupation: The Japanese Invasion of China, 1931-45, ed. Jonathan Henshaw, Craig A. Smith, and Norman Smith (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2021), pp. 78-88.
  • “More or Less Intelligent: Nikkei I.Q. and Racial/Ethnic Hierarchies in British Columbia and Imperial Japan,” BC Studies, No. 192, 2016/17: 51-69.
  • “Chapter 10: Politics of Manic-Depression in the Japanese Empire” in Science, Technology and Medicine in the Modern Japanese Empire, ed. Philip C. Brown and David G. Wittner (New York: Routledge, 2016), pp. 98-116.
  • Chapter Six: Rashomon as a Twelfth Century Period Picture and Occupation Period Social Critique,” in Rashomon Effects: Kurosawa, Rashomon, and Their Legacies, ed. Robert Anderson, Blair Davis and Jan Walls (New York: Routledge, 2016), pp. 56-65.
  • “Combating Indiscipline in the Imperial Japanese Army: Hayao Torao and Psychiatric Studies of the Crimes of Soldiers,” War in History, Vol. 23, No. 1, 2016: 79-99.
  • “Japanese Military Suicides during the Asia-Pacific War: Studies of the unauthorized self-killings of soldiers” (co-authored with Diana E. Wright), The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, Vol. 13, Issue 24, No. 3, June 22, 2015.
  • “Eugenics, Environment, and Acclimatizing to Manchukuo: Psychiatric Studies of Japanese Colonists,” Journal of the Japan Society of Medical History, Vol. 56, 3, 2010, pp. 329-50.
  • "Unfaithful Wives and Dissolute Labourers in Wartime Japan: 'Moral Panic' and the Mobilisation of Women into the Work Force," Gender and History, Vol. 18, No. 2, 2006.
  • "State Propaganda and Mental Disorders: The Issue of Psychiatric Casualties among Japanese Soldiers during the Asia-Pacific War," Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Vol. 78, No. 4 (Winter 2004): 804-35.
  • "Mental Health as Public Peace: Kaneko Junji and the Promotion of Psychiatry in Modern Japan," Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 38, No. 4 (2004): 899-930.
  • "Internal Security in Wartime Japan (1937-1945) and the Creation of Internal Insecurity," Canadian Journal of History, Vol. 31, No. 3, December 1996: 395-411.

 

Areas of Graduate Supervision:

Modern Japan

Accepting new graduate students: yes

Teaching Interests

Japan (all but especially 20th century)

Awards

SSHRCC Standard Research Grant (1999-2003)
Japan Foundation Fellowship (1991-1992)
Japanese Ministry of Education Research Scholarship (1987-1989)

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