Dr Chigusa Yamaura

chigusa y
Associate Professor in Global and Area Studies, MPhil GAS Course Director
St Antony's College
01865284948
chigusa.yamaura@area.ox.ac.uk

Dr Chigusa Yamaura is a sociocultural anthropologist who specialises in Japan and China. Her work examines a variety of topics, including gender, cross-border marriage, motherhood, reproduction, childcare, fertility, migration, colonial memory, nationalism and transnationalism in East Asia.

She is the Course Director of the MPhil in Global and Area Studies programme. Previously, she taught on the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies and the Contemporary China Studies Programme in the same department.

Dr Yamaura is the author of "Marriage and Marriageability: The Practices of Matchmaking between Men from Japan and Women from Northeast China," (Cornell 2020), based on her long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Japan and China.

She is currently working on two projects:

The first is a book examining demographic crisis narratives in contemporary Japan and how these narratives manifest in various aspects of people’s lives, including women’s reproductive health, childcare provision and paternity leave policies. She is currently completing the book manuscript.
 

The second project takes a 'Comparative Area Studies' approach to explore different demographic crisis narratives in East Asia, focusing on Japan, South Korea, China, and Taiwan. Funded by the John Fell Open Access Fund, this project examines how demographic changes in East Asia are socially narrated and circulated, and their effect on people’s intimate lives. It challenges the universal framework of 'demographic crisis' and explores how different local contexts influence this narrative.

 

Media Coverage: https://fivebooks.com/best-books/japan-chigusa-yamaura/

Research Interests
Research Disciplines:
  • Anthropology
  • Asian Studies
  • Gender Studies,
  • Japanese Studies
  • Chinese Studies
Research Keywords:
  • Marriage, Gender, Migration, Transnationalism, Demographic Crisis, Reproduction, Motherhood, Childcare, Nationalism, Colonial Memories, Social Policy, Ethnography, Future.
Countries:
  • Japan, China

Research Cluster:

Contact Information

Email: chigusa.yamaura@area.ox.ac.uk

Phone: 01865 284948

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chigusa-yamaura-377a301b8/

Publications

Books

  • Yamaura, Chigusa. Marriage and marriageability: The practices of matchmaking between men from Japan and women from Northeast China. Cornell University Press, 2020.

Articles

  • Yamaura, Chigusa. "An Imagined Shrinking Community: Japanese Nationalism and The Chronology of the Future." Japanese Studies 44, no. 1 (2024): 25-47.
  • Yamaura, Chigusa. "The cultural politics of childcare provision in the era of a shrinking Japan." Critical Asian Studies 52, no. 2 (2020): 248-269.
  • Yamaura, Chigusa. "From Manchukuo to marriage: Localizing contemporary cross-border marriages between Japan and Northeast China." The Journal of Asian Studies 74, no. 3 (2015): 565-588.
  • Yamaura, Chigusa. "Marrying Transnational, Desiring Local: Making" Marriageable Others" in Japanese–Chinese Cross-border Matchmaking." Anthropological Quarterly 88, no. 4 (2015): 1029-1058.

Book Chapters

  • Yamaura, Chigusa. "Marriage migration and diversities in Japan and East Asia." In Handbook of Migration, Ethnicity and Diversity, pp. 138-153 (Ed, Tsuda, TG), Edward Elgar Publishing, 2024.
  • Yamaura, Chigusa. "Making Ordinary, If Not Ideal, Intimate Relationships: Japanese-Chinese Transnational Matchmaking." In Intimate Japan (Eds, Alexy, A and Cook E), University of Hawaii Press, 2019.