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My overarching goal is to find new ways to connect the history of modern Japan to broader imperial, postcolonial, and global concerns.

My current project, Nature in Your Pocket: An Environmental History of the Nintendo Gameboy, links Japan's rise as a postwar electronics giant to extractivist practices around the world, from "cancer villages" in northern China to decimated gorilla habitants in the Congo. Nature in Your Pocket looks at how economic and environmental peripheries have reopened after the age of imperialism as a result of abstracting nature into virtual forms. It blends economic, environmental, and material history by making experimental forays into the digital humanities, such as interpreting the 'natural' worlds created in video games, as they come to stand in for our physical surroundings. 

My first book,  (University of Chicago Press, 2026) examines how Japanese-led ethnic cleansing and environmental planning demarcated Inner Mongolia as an autonomous province in the 1930s. This study offers an alternate understanding to the beginnings of the multiethnic framework of the People’s Republic of China. Instead of only seeing the foundations of Communist rule as forged in the fires of war against imperialism, it points to the significance of the Japanese occupation in shaping the ethnic and ecological bounds of modern China.

My research has been supported by the American Council for Learned Societies, the Fulbright Commission, the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, and the Japan Foundation.

Book:

Territorial Natures: The Limits of Imperial Japan in Inner Mongolia (University of Chicago Press, 2006). ()

Articles:

"Flyover Country: Imperial Japan and Aerial Technology in Manchukuo and Inner Mongolia." (under revision)

"The Death of Woman Guo: Big Asia and the Anthropocene," in The American Historical Review 130, no. 2 (June 2025), 652–657. (link)

"Japanese Imperialism and Environmental Disease on a Soy Frontier, 1890–1940," in Journal of Asian Studies 78, no. 4 (November 2019), 809–836. ()

Book Reviews:

Review of Ruth Rogaski, Knowing Manchuria: Environments, the Senses, and Natural Knowledge on an Asian Borderland (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2022) for Journal of Asian Studies 83, no. 2 (May 2024), 455–457. ()

Review of Kate Merkel-Hess, The Rural Modern: Reconstructing the Self and State in Republican China (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2016) for Twentieth-Century China 43, no. 2 (May 2018), E10–E13. ()

Review of Emer O’Dwyer, Significant Soil: Settler Colonialism and Japan’s Urban Empire in Manchuria (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2015) for Japanese Studies 37, no. 3 (December 2017), 399–401. ()

• Transregional Research Junior Scholar Fellowship in InterAsian Contexts and Comparisons, Social Science Research Council, 2018–2019
• Henry Luce Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, American Council for Learned Societies Program in China Studies, 2018–2019
• Advanced Social Science Research on Japan Fellowship, National Endowment for the Humanities, 2018–2019
• Gibbons Summer Research Grant with Stephanie Sun '18, ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ, Summer 2017
• Mellon Interdisciplinary Dissertation Completion Fellowship, Mahindra Humanities Center, Harvard University, 2014–2015
• Fulbright Grant to the People's Republic of China, United States Department of State, 2012–2013
• International Dissertation Research Fellowship, Social Sciences Research Council, 2012–2013
• Japanese Studies Fellowship for Doctoral Research, The Japan Foundation, 2012–2013
• Foreign Language and Area Studies Program, United States Department of Education, 2011
• Japanese Ministry of Education Fellowship, Kyoto University, 2005–2006

I teach introductory lecture courses on the history of Japan (from Jōmon to Pokémon) with attention to regional and global contexts. My upper-division seminars delve into histories of the environment, science, borderlands, and colonialism within East Asia more broadly. I welcome students from all backgrounds with no previous language experience in Japanese. 

• ASNS1003/HIST1003: Maps, Territory, Power in Asia (Fall 2024) ()
• ASNS2252/HIST2420: Culture and Conquest in Japan (Fall 2023)
• ASNS2311/HIST2421: Empire and Nation in Japan (Fall 2024)
• ASNS2410/HIST2410/URBS2525: Tokyo (Spring 2025)
• ASNS2890/HIST2891/ENVS2491: East Asian Environmental History (Spring 2025)
• ASNS3421/HIST3421: The Japanese Empire and Its Contested Legacies (Fall 2023)

I also advise students in independent studies and honors projects. I encourage students with advanced reading skills in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean to incorporate sources in the original language into their work. Some of the research papers that I have supervised include:

• Indigenous Labor and the Construction of the Burma Road
• History of a Catholic Tibetan House in Cigu, Yunnan
• Traditional Japanese Medicine in the Early Twentieth Century
• The "New Woman" in Colonial Korea
• Tuna in Japan's Transwar
• Environmental Ethics and Lake Dianchi in the People's Republic of China
• Environmental History of the Burma Railway
• Water Management in Meiji Sapporo
• Nomadic Migrations of Huuchin Barga Mongols in the Japanese Occupation (link)
• Noguchi Hideyo and the Transnational History of Yellow Fever Research

I advocate strongly for my students who want to travel, research, or work in Asia or who want to pursue postgraduate degrees in Asian Studies. I welcome requests for letters of recommendation IF and ONLY IF students follow these guidelines:

1. Letters of recommendation take an inordinate amount of time to craft. Please contact me by email or meet with me in person one month in advance of any deadline.
2. I write letters ONLY for graduate schools, academic fellowships, study abroad programs, academic internships, and post-graduate jobs. Check with me first before writing down my name and contact information as a reference. Students must have completed at least one course with me before asking for a reference or a recommendation.
3. Send me your resume, unofficial transcript, and grant proposal or statement of purpose as soon as possible so that the contents of my letter aligns with application materials. Explain the purpose of the letter (internship, scholarship, job application, etc.) and what I should emphasize in writing.
4. Also provide a self-addressed stamped envelope if I need to send a letter of recommendation on your behalf.
5. If you need future letters, provide two weeks of advance warning so that I can revise your letter on file.
6. Regardless of the outcome, let me know what happened. If you are traveling out-of-state or abroad, send me a postcard!