Michael Cronin

Japanese Studies Program Director, Associate Professor of Japanese Studies

Office: Washington Hall 309
Email: [[mpcronin]]

Teaching and Research

Michael Cronin's research concerns the role of the local in Japanese literature, cinema, and other popular culture. His monograph, Osaka Modern: The City in the Japanese Imaginary (Harvard East Asian Monographs, 2017), examines the relation between Japan's merchant capital and the imperial nation in film and literature of the transwar period, from the 1930s to the 1950s. His article, "Between Jeju and Hanshin: Intimate Migration" (Japanese Studies, 2022), looks at the historical link between Osaka and the Korean island of Jeju as represented in late works by the writer Oda Makoto. He is currently pursuing a book-length project that explores the pivotal year 1995, applying the linked concerns of eco-criticism, posthumanism, and alternate history.

Michael is also a translator. He has translated Tanizaki Jun'ichirō's final novel, The Maids (New Directions, 2017) and a collection of essays by Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows and Other Essays (Tuttle, 2026).

Michael received his BA from Boston College and his PhD in Japanese Studies from the University of California, Irvine (2010). He has been a visiting researcher at Hosei University, in Tokyo, and at Ritsumeikan University, in Kyoto. Before entering graduate school, Michael lived and worked in the Hanshin (Osaka-Kobe) region of Japan for eight years. He joined the faculty of William & Mary in 2009, and teaches courses on Japanese literature and culture, including "Anime Explores the Posthuman" (JAPN 100); "Cultures of Catastrophe" (JAPN 308); and "Japan's Ghosts and Demons" (JAPN 208).