Professor Jennifer Coates

School of Languages, Arts and Societies

Professor in Japanese Studies

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

Full contact details

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

I am a Professor of Japanese Studies at the School of East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield. My books include Making Icons: Repetition and the Female Image in Japanese Cinema, 1945-1964 (Hong Kong University Press, 2016) and Film Viewing in Postwar Japan, 1945-1968: An Ethnographic Study (Edinburgh University Press, 2022), as well as co-edited volumes 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.).

I am an AHRC Innovation Scholar and recipient of the 2021 Philip Leverhulme Prize for Visual and Performing Arts. My wider research interests include Japanese and East Asian cinema, photography, gender studies, filmmaking, and ethnographic methods. Before joining SEAS, 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.

Qualifications

MA (University of Glasgow), MA (SOAS, University of London), PhD (SOAS, University of London)

Research interests

My research and teaching is situated at the intersection of Japanese Studies, Film Studies, History, History of Art, and Anthropology, and can best be characterized as Japanese Cultural Studies. My work takes an interdisciplinary approach drawing from ethnography, art history, and museum studies as well as film studies. I use Japanese language and visual communications in my research practice and dissemination, with training in research-led filmmaking which resulted in a short documentary film on postwar cinema culture (When Cinema Was King, 2018). My collaborative research and editorship includes work in the fields of memory studies, gender studies, and politics, as well as pedagogy.

I am currently working on a project titled "'Japan' Outside Japan: Celebrity, Star Persona, and Curatorship in the Transmission of Japanese Arts and Cultures" funded by the Philip Leverhulme Prize. This project explores the use of a persona studies approach for understanding the perception and consumption of Japanese cultures outside Japan. Under an AHRC Innovation Scholars award I am currently partially seconded to Takero Shimazaki Architects to undertake research on "‘Japan’ in the Built Environment."

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.
  • Coates J, Fraser L & Pendleton M (Eds.) () . Routledge.

Journal articles

  • 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) 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

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.
Teaching activities

On leave until 2025.