Research Articles
“The Burdens of Self-Restraint: Social Measures and the Containment of Covid-19 in Japan.” Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 2022 (article)
Introduction to William LaFleur’s, Biolust, Brain death, and the Battle Over Organ Transplants: America's Biotech Juggernaut and its Japanese Critics, Edward Drott, ed. Bloomsbury Academic, 2022
“Robert Bellah as Modernization Theorist: Comments on Matteo Bortolini’s A Joyfully Serious Man.” Civic Sociology, 2022, (article)
“Between Biopolitical Governance and Care: Rethinking Health, Selfhood, and Social Welfare in East Asia” (Borovoy and Zhang), with Li Zhang, Medical Anthropology, 36(1): 1-5, 2017 (article)
“Japan’s Public Health Paradigm: Governmentality and the Containment of Harmful Behavior,” Medical Anthropology, 36(1): 32-46, 2017 (article)
“Robert Bellah’s Search for Community and Ethical Modernity in Japan Studies,” The Journal of Asian Studies, 75(2): 467-494, 2016 (article)
“Family and the Purview of Psychiatry in Japanese Society,” The History and Anthropology of Psychiatry, Junko Kitanaka and Akihito Suzuki, eds., second of three volumes, Psychiatric Philosophy and Thought, Koji Ishihara, ed., University of Tokyo Press「日本社会における家族と精神医学の権限」第２巻,「精神医学の歴史と人類学」鈴木晃仁、北中淳子編,シリーズ「精神医学の哲学と思想」（仮題）全３巻石原孝二編, pp. 194-225,東京大学出版会 (in Japanese), 2016
“Japanese and American Public Health Approaches to Preventing Population Weight Gain: A Role for Paternalism?” with Christina Roberto, Social Science & Medicine, vol. 143, 62-70, October 2015 (article)
“Metabolic Syndrome and Mass Screening: Are There Lessons We Can Learn from Japan?” In The Applied Anthropology of Obesity: Prevention, Intervention, and Identity, edited Chad Morris and Alexandra G. Lancey, pp. 65-78, Lexington Press (Rowman and Littlefield), 2015
“Doi Takeo and the Rehabilitation of Particularism in Postwar Japan,” The Journal of Japanese Studies, 38(2): 263-295, 2012 (article)
“Doi Takeo no Bunkaron (Takeo Doi’s Culture Theory),” in Kindai no ‘Nihon Ishiki’ no Seiritsu (The Making of Modern National Consciousness), edited by Josef Kreiner, pp. 413-424, Tokyo: Tokyodo, 2012
“Benedikuto no Kiku to Katana: Minshushugi no Dotai to Shite no Hōkenshugi (Ruth Benedict’s The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Feudal Foundations of Japanese Democracy),” in Kindai no ‘Nihon Ishiki’ no Seiritsu (The Making of Modern National Consciousness), edited by Josef Kreiner, pp. 210-227, Tokyo: Tokyodo, 2012
“Decentering Agency in Feminist Theory: Recuperating the Family as a Feminist Project,” with Kristen Ghodsee, Women’s Studies International Forum, 35(3): 153-165, 2012 (article)
“Japan as Mirror: Neoliberalism’s Promise and Costs,” in Ethnographies of Neoliberalism, Carol J. Greenhouse, editor, pp. 60-74, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010
“What Color is Your Parachute? The Post-Pedigree Society,” in Social Class in Japan, Hiroshi Ishida and David Slater, editors, pp. 170-194, Routledge Press, 2010
“Japan’s Hidden Youths: Mainstreaming the Emotionally Distressed in Japan,” Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, vol. 32, 552-576, 2008 (article)
“Managing the Unmanageable: Elderly Russian Jewish Emigrés and the Biomedical Culture of Diabetes Care,” with Janet Hine, Medical Anthropology Quarterly,22(1): 1-26, 2008 (article)
“The Rise of Eating Disorders in Japan: Issues of Culture and Limitations of the Model of ‘Westernization,’” with Kathleen Pike, Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, 28(4): 493-532, 2005 (article)
Book Reviews and DVD Reviews
“Nicolas Sternsdorff-Cisterna, Food Safety after Fukushima: Scientific Citizenship and the Politics of Risk (University of Hawai’i Press),” Journal of Japanese Studies, 79(4): 1025-1027, 2020. (review)
“Mari Armstrong-Hough, Biomedicalization and the Practice of Culture: Globalization and Type 2 Diabetes in the United States and Japan (University of North Carolina Press), Japan Review, number 35, 2020 (review)
“Kaori Okano and Yoshio Sugimoto, Rethinking Japanese Studies: Eurocentrism and the Asia Pacific Region (Routledge Contemporary Japan Series),” Journal of Japanese Studies, 45(2): 372-377, 2019 (review)
“Francesca Di Marco, Suicide in Twentieth Century (Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Asia),” Monumenta Nipponica, 73(2): 296-301, 2019 (review)
“Andrea Gevurtz Arai,” The Strange Child: Education and the Psychology of Patriotism in Recessionary Japan (Stanford University Press),” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 24(2): 390-391, 2018 (review)
“Jason Danely, Aging and Loss: Mourning and Maturity in Contemporary Japan (Rutgers University Press),” American Ethnologist, 43(4): 777-779, 2016 (review)
“Karen Nakamura, A Disability of the Soul: An Ethnography of Schizophrenia and Mental Illness in Contemporary Japan (Cornell University Press),” Journal of Japanese Studies, 41(1): 178-183, 2015 (review)
“Anne Allison, Precarious Japan (Duke University Press),” American Ethnologist, 41(4): 793–794, 2014 (review)
“Saitō Tamaki, Hikikomori: Adolescence Without End [translation of Shakaiteki Hikikomori, 1998] (University of Minnesota Press),” Mechademia, 12/2013 (review)
“Katsunori Kondo, Health Inequalities in Japan: An Empirical Study of Older People (TransPacific Press),” Journal of Japanese Studies, 38(2): 502-507, 2012 (review)
"David Plath, director. Can't Go Native? (DVD), Media Production Group, Asian Educational Media Service, 2010." American Anthropologist, 114(1): 152-153, 2012 (review)
"Kazuhiro Soda, director. Seishin (Mental) (DVD), Laboratory X, 2008." Japanese Studies 31(1): 135-136, May 2011 (review)
"Akiko Hashimoto and John W. Traphagan, eds. Imagined Families, Lived Families: Culture and Kinship in Contemporary Japan. (State University of New York Press)," Pacific Affairs, 83(4), December 2010
"Sabine Fruhstuck, Uneasy Warriors: Gender, Memory, and Popular Culture in the Japanese Army (University of California Press)," Journal of Japanese Studies 35(2): 455-460, 2009 (review)
"Miyako Inoue, Vicarious Language: Gender and Linguistic Modernity in Japan (University of California Press)," American Ethnologist 36(2): 410-412, May 2009 (review)
"Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Kamikaze Diaries: Reflections of Japanese Student Soldiers (University of Chicago Press)," American Anthropologist 109(4): 774-775, December 2007 (review)
"Gail Lee Bernstein, Isami's House: Three Centuries of a Japanese Family (University of California Press)," Journal of Asian History 41(2): 207-208, 2007
"Takie Sugiyama Lebra, The Japanese Self in Cultural Logic (University of Hawai'i Press)," Anthropological Quarterly 78(4): 1017-1023, Fall 2005 (review)
"Merry Isaacs White, Perfectly Japanese: Making Families in an Era of Upheaval (University of California Press)," Monumenta Nipponica 58(2): 198-200, summer 2003 (review)
"Daniel Touro Linger, No One Home: Brazilian Selves Remade in Japan (Stanford University Press)," American Anthropologist 105(1): 198-200, March 2003 (review)
"Karen Kelsky, Women on the Verge: Japanese Women, Western Dreams (Duke University Press)," American Ethnologist 29(4): 1035-1037, November 2002 (review)
Essays and Comments
West Windsor Film Festival, comments on Yōjirō Takita’s Departures [Okuribito], January 11, 2013 (pdf)
Dissent Magazine, "Beyond Choice: A New Framework for Abortion?", Fall 2011
Each year I teach a class called "Mind, Body, and Bioethics in Japan" to a group of Princeton undergraduates made up of students drawn to ethical dilemmas-aspiring doctors, scientists, and lawyers. The class departs from typical approaches to bioethics. Instead of attempting to arrive logically at the "right" or "best" answer to the human dilemmas posed by modern medicine, we take an anthropological approach, asking how the dilemmas themselves are shaped by and understood through the context of culture. (article)