himiko

My blogs

Gender	Female
Location	New Westminster, BC, Canada
Introduction	I used to be a respectable professor of Japanese history until about 15 years ago when I noticed my students reading manga and watching anime in English. I've always loved this stuff, but I wondered what they thought they were looking at. Manga and anime are so culturally specific, that I couldn't see how just translating the language helped much. And when I asked them what they made of these stories, I started getting upset that they weren't learning enough about Japanese culture even though it was all in there. So I wrote a book called Samurai from Outer Space to explain all (OK, some) of the historical, mythological and social implications of then popular anime and manga. I'm not upset about that any more though. Now I've become fascinated by the globalization of popular culture, and what happens when a medium intended for one audience is presented to a different audience with a different cultural context. Hence the new book which is a collection of essays about how non-Japanese fans interpret boys' love manga.
Interests	I'm writing a novel. It started as a murder mystery, but by now it's as much a riff on the genre as anything else. It's also a coming of age story and a lot of other stuff too.