Maki Kaneko
- On leave during the 2025-2026 academic year
- Associate Professor, Japanese Art
- Graduate Advisor for East Asian Art
Contact Info
Biography —
Maki Kaneko teaches courses on the history of Japanese modern and contemporary art, print culture, and manga from the seventeenth century to the present, as well as the arts of Asian Americans and Asian diasporas. Her research focuses on the politics of memory, race, and gender in twentieth-century Japanese visual culture and the broader Asia-Pacific region.
Her book Mirroring the Japanese Empire (2014) examines the representation and meaning of the male figure in Japanese oil painting and cinema between 1930 and 1950, decades during which Japan was engaged in a series of imperialist wars. She has also published a range of journal articles and book chapters on Japanese women artists, Nihonga (“Japanese-style” painting), and Japanese American art and its historiography.
Kaneko’s current research explores Japanese American diaspora artists, the transnational history of “Japanese” art, and gender and sexuality in contemporary Japanese visual culture. Her exhibition Street Nihonga: The Art of Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani, co-curated with the Spencer Museum of Art and featuring the work of Japanese American diaspora artist Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani, will open on February 19, 2026, and will travel to additional venues in the United States and Japan.
Education —
Teaching —
Lecture Courses:
Modern and Contemporary Visual Arts of Japan
Japanese Prints
Manga: Histories and Theories
The Art of Asian Americans and Asian Diasporas
City of Tokyo
Graduate Seminars:
Asian Art: Theory and Method (co-taught with Amy McNair)
Photography: From Colonialism to Globalism (co-taught with John Pultz)
Asian Artists across the Pacific
Crafts in Japan: Materials, Making, and Meaning (co-taught with Sherry Fowler)
The Avant-garde in Japanese and Korean Arts (co-taught with Jungsil Jenny Lee)
Korea-Japan Artistic Interactions (co-taught with Maya Stiller)
Men and Masculinities in Japanese Visual Culture
Disasters in Japanese Visual Art
Memories of War in Post-1945 Japanese Visual Arts
Modernity and Identity of Transnational Japan, 1850-1950 (co-taught with Sherry Fowler)
Contemporary Asian Art Overseas (co-taught with David Cateforis)
War and Empire in 20th-Century Japanese Visual Culture
Ph.D. Dissertations Directed
Takaaki Kumagai, “Kitagawa Tamiji's Art and Art Education: Translating Culture in Postrevolutionary Mexico and Modern Japan,” April 2017.
Alison Miller, “Mother of the Nation: Femininity, Modernity, and Class in the Image of Empress Teimei,” April 2016.
Daisuke Murata, “Competing Downward: Kishimoto Sayako’s Art of Social Reform” (ongoing)
Jeongwon Yoon, “The Boundary Breakers: The Free Artists Association and the Abstract Art Movement in Imperial Japan and Colonial Korea, 1937–1945” (ongoing)
Selected Publications —
Street Nihonga: The Art of Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani (peer‑reviewed exhibition catalogue, chief editor and main author, co‑edited with Kris Imants Ercums; forthcoming from Amsterdam University Press, February 2026).
"Exhibition review, Gaku Tsutaja: WARP DRIVE, Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels 2022.7.23-10.2,” RealTokyo: Culture Review Site, September 10, 2022. Exhibition review on RealTokyo.com.
"Contemporary Goshin’ei: The Emperor, Art, and the Anus,” in Noriko Murai, Jeff Kingston and Tina Burrett (eds.), Japan in Heisei Era (1989-2019): Multidisciplinary Perspectives (Routledge; 2022), 14-30. Book is available at Routledge.com
Modern & Contemporary East Asian Art," co-edited with Kris Imants Ercums, special issue, Spencer Museum of Art: The Register, no. 5 (2019). Spencer Museum of Art Register.
“Hokubei ni okeru Nihon kindai bijutsushi to Ajiakei America bijutsu kenkyū no shiza” [Japanese Modern Art History in North America and the Perspective of Asian American Art Studies], in Kitahara Megumi ed., Kagakukenkyuhi kiban kenkyū, Kenkyuseika hōkokusho: Tokushū Taniguchi Fumie kenkyū [Report of Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research: Special Issue: Taniguchi Fumie Studies] (Toyonaka: Ryūshidō, 2018), 67-78.
“Bijutsushi kara mita Mirikitani [Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani from an Art Historical Perspective],” in Mirikitani no neko [The Cats of Mirikitani] movie booklet and webpage, 2016. nekonomirikitani.com.
“War Heroes of Modern Japan: Early 1930s War Fever and the Three Brave Bombers,” in Philip K. Hu ed., Conflicts of Interest: The Art of War in Modern Japan (St. Louis: St. Louis Art Museum, 2016), 69-81.
Mirroring the Japanese Empire: The Male Figure in Yōga Painting, 1930-1950 (Leiden: Brill, 2014).
"Dai roku shō dai ichi setsu Modanizumu no tayōka seido to shakai" [Chapter 6, section 1 Diversification of Modernisms: Institution and Society] to be published in Nihon kingendai bijutsu zenshi [Comprehensive History of Modern and Contemporary Japanese Art] (Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppansha, 2014).
"New Art Collectives in the Service of the War: The Formation of Art Organizations During the Asia-Pacific War, 1937-1945," Positions: East Asia cultures critique 21, no. 2 (Spring 2013): 309-350.
"Under the Banner of the New Order: Uchida Iwao's Responses to the Asia-Pacific War and Japan's Defeat," in Asato Ikeda, Aya Louisa McDonald and Ming Tiampo eds., Art and War in Japan and its Empire, 1931-1960 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 190-207.
Awards & Honors —
Chino Kaori Memorial Essay Prize (Japan Art History Forum) for “Art and the State: Government-Sponsored Art Exhibitions and Art Politics in War-Time Japan”
Grants & Other Funded Activity —
Terra Foundation Senior Fellowship in American Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum
Research Fellowship Program from the Japan Foundation
Individual Research Grant from the Metropolitan Center for Far East Asian Art Studies
New Faculty General Research Fund, University of Kansas
Hyūga Postgraduate Studentship from the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures