Kirsten Cather

I have been teaching and researching Japanese literature, film, and culture at the University of Texas at Austin for the past 15 years. After studying abroad at Doshisha University in Kyoto and majoring in Japanese as an undergraduate at Connecticut College, I spent several years working for Japanese and American corporations in Tokyo and New York. I then earned my Ph.D. in Japanese literature with a secondary specialization in film from UC Berkeley back in 2004. My first book, The Art of Censorship in Postwar Japan (University of Hawai`i Press, 2012 and part of the prestigious Columbia University Weatherhead Series) analyzed landmark censorship trials of literature, films, photography, and manga charged with “obscenity” (waisetsu) over the course of the second half of the 20th century. My current book project, Scripting Suicide in Modern Japan, considers how and why individuals write in the face and wake of suicide.