Eternal Japan

Constantine N. Vaporis is a Professor of History and Founding Director of Asian Studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Though his research focuses on the Edo period, Professor Vaporis is deeply interested in the entire range of Japanese history and teaches his courses from an East Asian or comparative context. Author of Breaking Barriers: Travel and the State in Early Modern Japan; Tour of Duty: Samurai, Military Service in Edo and the Culture of Early Modern Japan; Voices of the Shogun's Age: Contemporary Accounts of Daily Life in Tokugawa, Japan, 1603-1868 (2nd edition); Samurai. An Encyclopedia of Japan’s Cultured Warriors; and (pre-press) The Samurai in Fifteen Lives, he also remains fascinated by contemporary Japan. He has received numerous fellowships for research in Japanese history including a Fulbright Scholar's Award, an NEH Fellowship for College Teachers, an appointment as the 2013-2016 UMBC Presidential Research Professor, and an appointment as a Member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. in 2020-21. Having received his Ph.D. from Princeton's East Asian Studies department, he began teaching at UMBC in 1989, has had visiting appointments at The Johns Hopkins University and University of Pennsylvania. He frequently conducts workshops in Japanese history for teachers and museum docents as well as three-day courses on contemporary Japanese and Asian history for various U.S. government agencies. Vaporis first traveled to Japan in 1978 and has continued to travel there almost yearly. He has lived in a number of different cities across the country--Tokyo, Kyoto, Kochi, Hiroshima--for a total of roughly seven years.

Dr. Kaitlyn Ugoretz is the Postdoctoral Fellow in East Asian Media at the University of Idaho’s Habib Institute for Asian Studies. Her experience studying and working abroad in China inspired her to spend her life learning and teaching about East Asia. She received her BA and MA from the University of Pennsylvania and earned her PhD in East Asian cultural studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. As an expert on Japanese religion and culture, Ugoretz has lived and worked in Japan for several years, conducting fieldwork at shrines, temples, and other historical sites across Japan. Her research focuses on the global spread of Shinto through social media and popular culture. She consults on games and television and writes for outlets including Religion News Service, The Washington Post, Critical Asian Studies, and The Conversation. She is a frequent podcast guest and the host of the award-winning educational YouTube channel "Eat Pray Anime," which explores Japanese religious history and culture through comics, anime, and video games.

Marjorie Williams has had a life-long passion for Asian Art.  A museum professional for over forty-five years, Ms. Williams was on staff of the Cleveland Museum of Art until 2021. Serving in different capacities—including Director of the Department of Education and Public Programs and Senior Director for Endowment Development. Her consistent focus, however, has been the extraordinary Asia collection. She lectured, organized educational exhibitions, wrote catalogues and articles about Asia’s artistic traditions and their importance in world art.  From 1987-2021, she was also an Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of Art History, Case Western Reserve University.  Since 1990, she has worked with travel companies as a lecturer on tours to Japan, China, Hong Kong and South Korea.  When not traveling, she enjoys researching 19th century travel diaries.

Carol Morland is a Japanese art historian, with special expertise in the painting of the Edo period. She has taught courses in East and Southeast Asian art at the University of Michigan, the University of Washington, Nanzan University (Nagoya, Japan), Temple University Japan (Tokyo), and the University of Hawaii. In addition, Carol has been an editor for Orientations in Hong Kong and has translated Japanese articles for that magazine and other publications. Most recently, she was an assistant curator at the Honolulu Museum of Art, where she focused on the museum's collection of ukiyo-e. Carol holds an M.A. in Japanese Studies and a Ph.D. in Japanese art history from the University of Michigan. She has two decades of experience living, working, and studying in Japan and China. Current research topics include the changing concepts of Japanese portraiture in the early modern period and the rise of amateur painting circles in the Nagoya area during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Louisa McDonald is an associate professor of art history and chair of the Department of Art at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) who specializes in Japanese art. She earned a PhD in East Asian art from Stanford University, focusing on medieval Japanese narrative scroll painting, and did post-graduate studies in Japanese art history at Tokyo University. After a postdoc at Harvard University, where she was an associate in research at the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute for Japanese Studies, Louisa taught in New England and then joined the faculty at UNLV. Her scholarly interests range widely from French Japonisme to modern and contemporary Japanese art. Currently, her research is focused on the relationship between art and war, particularly the World War II art of the Japanese artist Fujita Tsuguharu (1886-1968). She contributed to and co-edited Art and War in Japan and its Empire: 1931-1960, an anthology of art historical essays.

Jonathan M. Hall teaches courses in Japanese literature, media, film and aesthetics at California State University San Bernardino. His broad pedagogy includes Classical Japanese Literature, Cultures of the Floating World, women’s & minority literatures, and Japanese film, animation, & manga. Jonathan's published articles and book manuscript include writing on kabuki dance, Japanese postwar photography & performance, and twentieth-century Japanese film. Jonathan is also active as a film subtitler and as a contemporary performance dramaturge. Following graduate work that he pursued dually at the University of Tokyo and the University of California Santa Cruz, Jonathan has taught at the University of Chicago, the National University of Fine Arts and Music in Tokyo, the University of Leeds (UK), and several University of California campuses.

Robert W. Foster has been fascinated by Asian cultures since he first read a translation of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching in high school. Since that early encounter with a strikingly unfamiliar worldview, he has spent his academic career developing a better understanding of the history of Asian civilizations. After receiving a BA in history from Kenyon College in Ohio, Foster pursued graduate work at Harvard University, where he studied both Chinese and Japanese language and history and earned his master's degree in East Asia Studies and his PhD in Chinese history. Since 1997, Robert has been a member of the faculty of the Department of History at Berea College in Kentucky, where he created the Asian Studies program. Robert has explored human interaction throughout East and Central Asia, and worked to make East Asian cultures more accessible to a Western audience through translations and public lectures that focus on cultural exchange of language, ideas, and material goods. Recognizing the value of directly engaging with Asian cultures, he has led student and faculty groups to Japan and China. He has served as Smithsonian Journeys Expert on a number of journeys in Japan and China since 2011.

Paula Swart is an art historian with expertise in Asian art, culture, and history, and has spent most of her professional life as a curator of Asian Studies. She is a lecturer in the Continuing Education Departments of the University of British Columbia where she has taught a series of courses related to UNESCO World Heritage. Paula holds degrees in Sinology, Asian art history, Chinese history, and archaeology, having spent two years studying in China. She speaks five languages, including Mandarin, and has published several books and numerous articles on the art and architecture of Asian cultures. A frequent contributor to the Arts of Asia magazine, which published “Visual Perspectives: A Mirror of Events in The Live of the Last Shogun” and  her most recent article “Kabuki Idols: The Star Power of the Ichikawa Danjuro Lineage” published in the 2023 Spring issue of Arts of Asia, discusses the popular Kabuki theatre tradition of Japan.

Paula has enjoyed introducing visitors to Asian culture and history for more than 30 years, having participated in well over 70 expeditions by train, ship or private jet.  Her most recent article “In Focus: The Enduring Cultural Exchanges between Holland and Japan”, published in the Autumn 2025 issue of Arts of Asia, explores encounters and mutual influences beyond the trade connections

Hugh Shapiro is a professor of East Asian history at the University of Nevada. As a Smithsonian Journeys Expert, he has lectured in 15 countries in Eurasia. Hugh has enjoyed visiting appointments at Princeton University, at universities in China, Japan, and Taiwan, and at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. His extensive archival and fieldwork regards the history of medicine, disease, and the body in comparative context. His recent work appears in volumes published by Harvard University Press, Brill, and Oxford University Press. Hugh has traveled extensively in Eurasia: China, Japan, Mongolia, Russia, the Baltic States, the Himalayas, and the Silk Road. He enjoys mountain sports and counts volcanic Kamchatka, Greenland, and Mount Kōya near Kyoto as among his favorite destinations. Hugh aims for what he terms “adventure pedagogy”: mindful immersion in the host culture combined with serious study of its history, literature, and geopolitics. Hugh’s other research and teaching interests include visual and performance art, Central Asia, and the history of de-colonization and authoritarianism. During his years of study and research in China, Japan, and Taiwan, he enjoyed diverse experiences, such as working on an innovative Sino-Japanese television series for NHK. He received the Li-Qing Prize for the History of Chinese Science and won his university’s highest teaching award. Hugh earned his B.A. from Stanford University and his Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Writer and lecturer Adam Tanner spent many years as a foreign correspondent for Reuters news agency, including as Balkans bureau chief; San Francisco bureau chief; and correspondent in Germany, Moscow, and Washington D.C. He has long studied colonialism, economic engagement, and globalization, with a particular interest in the enduring impact of Europe on Asia, Latin America, and Africa. He has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, Bloomberg TV, NPR, and the BBC, and written for publications such as Scientific America, Forbes, Fortune, Time, and Frommer’s guidebooks.  

Adam was a fellow and associate at Harvard University from 2011-26, initially at the Nieman Foundation, then the Institution of Quantitative Social Science, and most recently, the Shorenstein Center Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government.  He has written two books on privacy and commerce: Our Bodies, Our Data and What Stays in Vegas.