Professor

Department of Integrated Humanities
(Comparative Studies of Culture)

E-mail: mizobuti[at]hiroshima-u.ac.jp

Russo-Japanese Comparative Cultural Studies with a Focus on Problems in Cross-cultural Symbolism and Cross-cultural Exchange

• Comparative Literature
• Translation Studies
• Cultural Representation
• Modern Japanese Literature
• Modern and Contemporary Russian Literature

My specialty is comparative literature. I investigate the mutual literary relationship between present-day Japan and Russia with a focus on the various issues of translation and foreign culture symbolism. Apart from reception/effect theory, I am also interested in the transformation of Japanism, changing concept of world literature, and interaction between the fields of art and literature.

• The Subject of Russia in the Period of the Russo-Japanese War: A Case Study of a Japanese Girls’ Magazine, Kumamoto Journal of Culture and Humanities, 103, 153-163, 2012.
• “Bocchan” from the Russian Perspective, Japan Comparative Literature Association (ed.), Language Crossing Borders: Japanese Literature Meets the World, Sairyusha, pp.341-349, 2011.
• Text that Blends and Breaks Apart: Reading Minae Mizumura’s “Shishosetsu: from left to right,” Research Promotion and Regional Cooperation Committee, Kumamoto University Department of Letters (ed.), International Spirit and Interdisciplinary Thought: Kumamoto University’s 21st Century Literature Department Forum Series 1, Kumamoto Publishing Cultural Center, pp.42-65, 2010.
• The Imaginative Power of Russophobia: Russia in “And Then,” Masaki Sakamoto et al. (eds.), Soseki and World Literature, Shibunkaku Shuppan, pp.232-250, 2009.
• Portrayals of Japanese in Russian Literature: An Analysis Focusing on V. Pikul’s Tri Vozrasta Okini-san, Journal of Comparative Literature, 47, 102-113, 2004.