Scholar Laura Miller will discuss with us Female Driven Culture in Japan, including examples of the Himiko (Shaman Queen of Ancient Japan or Wa) boom, hunting for female empowerment/spirituality spots, Cat cafes, Otome road where there are shops for female manga and costume play fans and demographic power: male beauty work and herbivore men. Laura Miller is Ei’ichi Shibusawa-Seigo Arai Endowed Professor of Japanese Studies and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She has published widely on Japanese culture and language, including topics such as English loanwords in Japanese, elevator girls, the beauty industry, girls’ slang, self-photography, and divination. She teaches courses on Japan and linguistic anthropology and works to promote Japan Studies through a variety of campus and community programming. She is the author or co-editr of four books on Japan. Beauty Up: Exploring Contemporary Japanese Body Aesthetics (University of California Press, 2006), Bad Girls of Japan (Palgrave, 2005) Manners and Mischief: Gender, Power, and Etiquette in Japan (University of California Press, 2011), and Modern Girls on the Go: Gender, Mobility, and Labor in Japan (Stanford University Press, 2013).
