Professor Jennifer Coates

School of Languages, Arts and Societies

Professor of Japanese Studies

Photo of Jennifer Coates
Profile picture of Photo of Jennifer Coates
jennifer.coates@sheffield.ac.uk
4.21, Jessop West

Full contact details

Professor Jennifer Coates
School of Languages, Arts and Societies
4.21
Jessop West
1 Upper Hanover Street
Sheffield
S3 7RA
Profile

I am Professor of Japanese Studies at the School of Languages, Arts, and Societies, 爆料TV. I teach and research Japanese cinema, arts, and culture from an interdisciplinary perspective. My first book, Making Icons: Repetition and the Female Image in Japanese Cinema, 1945-1964 (2016) offered a close reading of popular film texts derived from Art History methods, while my second book Film Viewing in Postwar Japan, 1945-1968: An Ethnographic Study (2022) is the first ethno-history of cinema-going in Japan. I have co-edited volumes on Engaging with War Memory: Legacies of East Asian Conflicts, 1930-1945 (Palgrave, 2023, with Buchheim, E.),  Japanese Visual Media: Politicizing the Screen (Routledge, 2021 with Ben-Ari, E.) and The Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture (Routledge, 2019 with Fraser, L., and Pendleton, M.) and I am currently completing a project on cultural arbitrage in the transmission of Japanese arts and cultures while serving as the President of the British Association of Japanese Studies and Honorary Secretary of the UK Council for Area Studies Associations.


I have been an AHRC Innovation Scholar (2023-2024) and recipient of the 2021 Philip Leverhulme Prize for Visual and Performing Arts. Before joining Sheffield, I studied, researched, and taught in many areas of the world: as an AHRC Kluge Fellow at the Library of Congress, Washington D.C. (2012), a Visiting Research Fellow at the Australian National University (2011), Assistant Professor at the Hakubi Center for Advanced Research, Kyoto University (2014-2018), and Senior Lecturer in Japanese Arts, Cultures, and Heritage at the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures at the University of East Anglia (2018-2019).

Qualifications

PhD in Film and Media, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (2014)
MA (Distinction) in History of Art, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (2008)
MA (First Class) Joint Honours English Literature and History of Art, University of Glasgow (2007)

Research interests

My current research project is titled Persona, Pseudonym, Symbol: ‘Japan’ Outside Japan and offers the first interdisciplinary and multi-sited assessment of the contemporary role of an imagined ‘Japan’ in everyday life in the UK. While art history has charted the influence of Japonisme on Anglo-European arts at the turn of the 20th century, and studies of science and technology often invoke Japan as an outsize influence on a global (real or imagined) future, we lack a comprehensive understanding of the impact of ‘Japan’-identified people and products on our contemporary era. Setting workplace ethnography conducted in key cultural production spaces against a historical account of the UK’s engagement with Japan through specific areas of arts and culture, this project focuses on the people who transmit an idea of ‘Japan’ outside Japan itself, and the impact of this imagined ‘Japan’ on our daily lives in the UK. The project will result in a book and a series of articles. My projects in development include a comparative study of how film and media can help people imagine new ways of living suitable for a degrowth future in the UK and Japan. I have supervised PhDs and postdoctoral projects on concepts of home in East Asian cinema, gender in news reporting, and politics in contemporary Japan.

Publications

Books

  • Coates J (2022) Film viewing in postwar Japan, 1945-1968: an ethnographic study. Edinburgh University Press.
  • Coates J (2016) Making icons : repetition and the female image in Japanese cinema, 1945–1964. Hong Kong University Press.

Edited books

  • Buchheim E & Coates J (Ed.) (2023) War Memory and East Asian Conflicts, 1930–1945. Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Coates J & Ben-Ari E (Ed.) (2021) Japanese visual media : politicizing the screen. Abingdon: Routledge.

Journal articles

  • Coates J (2026) . Film Quarterly, 79(3), 19-31.
  • Coates J (2025) Care, Ethics, and Omoiyari: Doing Ethnography in Japan. Japan Review, 40, 195-212.
  • Coates J (2025) . positions.
  • Coates J & Coates J (2025) . Asia-Pacific Journal, 23.
  • Coates J (2024) . Screen, 65(3), 352-372.
  • Coates J (2023) Book Review: Suzuki Seijun and Postwar Japanese Cinema by William Carroll. Japan Review, 38, 246-248.
  • Coates J (2023) Voices from an unusual archive: university film circle writings, 1945-1960. Asia-Pacific Journal : Japan Focus, 21(6), 5777.
  • Coates J (2023) . The Journal of Asian Studies, 489-491.
  • Coates J (2022) . Journal of Gender Studies.
  • Coates J (2022) . Technology and Culture, 63(3), 910-911.
  • Nardy DT, Coates J & Coates J (2021) . Open Screens, 4(1).
  • Coates J (2019) Quietly Critical: Ten Years Japan. Frames Cinema Journal, 15.
  • Coates J (2019) . Arts, 8(1).
  • Mostafanezhad M, Coates J & Coates J (2018) . International Journal of Tourism Anthropology, 6(3), 219-236.
  • Coates J (2018) Setsuko Hara vs. the press: the post-war trolling of a wartime icon. Frames Cinema Journal, 13.
  • Coates J (2018) . Japan Forum, 30(2), 224-239.
  • Coates J (2017) . Cultural Studies, 32(1), 105-125.
  • Coates J (2017) Socializing the audience: Going to the cinema in post-war Japan. Participations, 14(2), 590-607.
  • Coates J (2017) The fragmented family on film: Kinoshita Keisuke's Nihon no Higeki (The Tragedy of Japan) (1953) and the antecedents of the contemporary fragmented family in Japan. Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, 40.
  • Coates J (2017) . Japanese Studies, 37(3), 353-369.
  • Coates J (2016) . U.S.-Japan Women's Journal, 50(1), 29-53.
  • Coates J (2014) . Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, 6(1), 23-38.
  • Coates J (2013) . Media, War & Conflict, 6(3), 233-248.
  • Coates J () . U.S.-Japan Women's Journal, 54, 6-28.
  • Coates J () . U.S.-Japan Women's Journal, 54, 3-5.

Book chapters

  • Coates J (2025) , Handbook of Japanese Media and Popular Culture in Transition (pp. 217-230). Routledge
  • Coates J (2025) Kinoshita's Children: Memories of Kinoshita's Films among Audiences of the Postwar Era, Cinema of Kinoshita Keisuke Films of Joy and Sorrow (pp. 277-293).
  • Coates J, Hsieh H, Lee SA & Taylor-Jones K (2023) The pan-Asian 'Miss Granny' phenomenon In Diffrient DS & Chan K (Ed.), East Asian Film Remakes (pp. 272-290). Edinburgh University Press
  • Coates J (2023) In Buchheim E & Coates J (Ed.), War Memory and East Asian Conflicts, 1930–1945 (pp. 213-236). Palgrave Macmillan
  • Buchheim E & Coates J (2023) In Buchheim E & Coates J (Ed.), War Memory and East Asian Conflicts, 1930–1945 (pp. 1-14). Palgrave Macmillan
  • Coates J & Coates J (2023) Re-Presenting Sino-Japanese Relations through Flavors of Youth, TRANSNATIONAL EAST ASIAN STUDIES (pp. 169-183).
  • Coates J (2022) (pp. 316-333). Wiley
  • Coates J & Ben-Ari E (2022) Japanese Visual Media Politicizing the Screen Introduction, JAPANESE VISUAL MEDIA (pp. 1-12).
  • Coates J (2022) Representing Japan: Stereotyping and self-stereotyping in the many careers of Yamaguchi Yoshiko, Capture Japan Visual Culture and the Global Imagination from 1952 to the Present (pp. 224-244).
  • Coates J (2021) In Ben Ari E & Wong H-W (Ed.), Cultural Intermediaries in East Asian Film Industries (pp. 52-71). London: Routledge.
  • Coates J (2021) , Cultural Intermediaries in East Asian Film Industries (pp. 52-71). Routledge
  • Coates J (2021) In Coates J & Ben-Ari E (Ed.), Japanese Visual Media: Politicizing the Screen (pp. 180-200). Abingdon: Routledge (Taylor & Francis).
  • Coates J (2021) In Taylor JE (Ed.), Visual Histories of Occupation : A Transcultural Dialogue (pp. 75-96). London: Bloomsbury Academic.
  • Coates J (2020) In Otmazgin N & Ben-Ari E (Ed.), Creative Context : Creativity and Innovation in the Media and Cultural Industries (pp. 101-117). Springer
  • Coates J (2020) The Yakuza film : a genre 'endorsed by the people' In Phillips A & Fujiki H (Ed.), The Japanese Cinema Book (pp. 348-360). Bloomsbury / British Film Institute
  • Coates J (2020) Bodies in the dark : the postwar cinema audience and the body as ‘Ground Zero’ In Holca I & Sǎpunaru T?ma? C (Ed.), Forms of the Body in Contemporary Japanese Society, Literature, and Culture (pp. 237-257). Lexington Books
  • Coates J, Fraser L & Pendleton M (2020) Gender and culture in Japan today INTRODUCTION, ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO GENDER AND JAPANESE CULTURE (pp. 1-7).
  • Coates J, Fraser L & Pendleton M (2019) In Coates J, Fraser L & Pendleton M (Ed.), The Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture (pp. 1-7). Routledge
  • Coates J & Haapio-Kirk L (2019) In Coates J, Fraser L & Pendleton M (Ed.), The Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture (pp. 240-250). Routledge
  • Coates J (2019) The making of an auteur : the early films (1958-1959) In Coleman L & Desser D (Ed.), Killers, Clients and Kindred Spirits : The Taboo Cinema of Shohei Imamura (pp. 21-40). Edinburgh University Press
  • Coates J (2018) In Magnan-Park AHJ, Marchetti G & Tan SK (Ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Asian Cinema (pp. 221-241). Palgrave Macmillan, London
  • Coates J (2018) , Palgrave Handbook of Asian Cinema (pp. 221-241).
  • Coates J & ジェニファー　コーツ）（ (2016) 時を超えて出会いは再び訪れる:李香蘭／山口淑子／シャーリー?ヤマ グチ In Wada I & Katsura K (Ed.), 他者との邂逅は何をもたらすのか: 「異文化接触」を再考する (pp. 18-48). Showado
  • Coates J (2015) Pleasures of Recognition and Mediation in the Spectacle of the Nation In Drummond P (Ed.), The London Film and Media Reader 3: The Pleasures of the Spectacle The London Symposium
  • () In Coates J, Fraser L & Pendleton M (Ed.) Routledge

Book reviews

  • Coates J (2019) . The Journal of Japanese Studies, 45(2), 415-419.
  • Coates J (2014) . The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 15(1), 94-96.
  • Allan J (2012) . The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 13(3), 299-301.
  • Coates J (2012) Noriko J. Horiguchi, Women Adrift: The Literature of Japan's Imperial Body (Review). Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, 30.
Research group

Yuxin Zhang, “Family and National Identity in East Asian Biographical Films: The Political and Cultural Tension between ‘Returning Home’ and ‘Abandoning Home’” (1st supervisor) Zhangbo Liu, “An Analysis of the Reporting on Chinese Female Victims of Violent Crimes in British Newspapers, 2011-2021” (1st supervisor) Luca Dorothy Pihaj, “Identity in Japan’s International Relations: Negotiating the ‘Self’” (2nd supervisor) Junxi Yao, “Understanding Japan’s Sharing Economy – National System of Innovation and Institutional Work Perspectives” (2nd supervisor)

Teaching interests

At the 爆料TV I have led undergraduate modules on “East Asian Cinema: People, Platforms, Places,” “Japanese Popular Culture,” “Researching Japan: Stardom and Celebrity,” “Japan Research Project,” and “Contemporary Japanese Society,” and have co-taught on “Mass Culture and Digital Society,” and “Gender and Identities in East Asia.” I supervise MA and MSc students, PhD students, and undergraduate dissertation projects. 

At Kyoto University (2014-2018) I taught undergraduate modules on “Postwar Japanese Cinema,” “Gender in Japan,” and “Interpreting the Humanities Through Gender Relations” (in Japanese).

Teaching activities

LAS225 Contemporary Japanese Society
LAS258 East Asian Cinema

Professional activities and memberships

President of the British Association of Japanese Studies (2025-2028)
Honorary Secretary of the UK Council for Area Studies Associations (2026-2029)
Stream convenor, European Association of Japanese Studies

Awards and Fellowships:

Philip Leverhulme Prize PLP-2021-030
AHRC Innovation Scholars Secondment in Design AH/X004961/1
AHRC Research Networking Scheme award AH/V00090X/1
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Wakate B Award
Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Science, Sport, and Technology (MEXT) 
Postgraduate Research Fellowship
Kluge Research Fellowship, Library of Congress, Washington D.C.

Editorships and Board memberships:

Co-Editor of the Routledge Series in East Asian Cinema in a Global Context
International board member of Japan Review

Public Engagement (selected):

Panellist and discussant for film screenings and festivals at the Barbican Arts Center, The British Film Institute, The British Museum, The Garden Cinema London, Sheffield Showroom Cinema, the Phoenix Cinema Leicester, and Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme.
Essayist and on-disc interviewee for film rereleases by BFI, Radiance Films, and Eureka distributors and festival programmes.