2007-08-06T13:07:41-05:00

I was born in Tokyo and educated in Japan, the USA and UK. After completing a BA in English and American literature and an MA in American Studies, I worked at the School of East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield, and during this period I began my research in craft and design history. A fascination with the local history of Sheffield, and its connection with John Ruskin and the English Arts & Crafts movement, gave rise to my interest in Ruskin’s influence in Japan. Ruskin in Japan 1890-1940: Nature for Art, Art for Life (1997) was my first major joint project, for which I curated an exhibition and produced a publication. My PhD was a cross-cultural critique of the Japanese folkcrafts (Mingei) movement, and was subsequently published as Japanese Modernisation and Mingei Theory: Cultural Nationalism and Oriental Orientalism (2004). Since 2000, I have been leading a project on Taiwanese visual culture during Japanese colonisation. My interests focus on the representation of cultures within East Asia, modernities and cultural identities in the colonial context. With major funding from the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation and the Taiwanese government, I organised a conference at the National Museum of History in Taipei, and an edited book, Refracted Modernity: Visual Culture and Identity in Colonial Taiwan (2007) was published. I am currently leading a new international project ‘Oriental’ Modernity: A Comparative Study of Modern Design in East Asia’. In relation to my most recent research on the American designer Russel Wright’s intervention in Asia, I am also leading AHRC funded ‘Forgotten Japonisme’ project jointly with Professor Toshio Watanabe.

Dr Yuko

Kikuchi

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2008-08-20T06:20:41-05:00