Michael Weiner

Dr. Michael Weiner is a Professor of East Asian History and International Studies and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at Soka University of America. He holds a PhD in Modern Japanese History from the University of Sheffield and a BA in Chinese History and Sociology from Sophia University, Tokyo. His research focuses on race, ethnicity, migration, and the social history of medicine in Japan, particularly leprosy control and the Korean community in Japan. Weiner has authored and edited seminal works, including Race and Migration in Imperial Japan and Japan’s Minorities: The Illusion of Homogeneity.

He has held leadership roles at Soka, San Diego State University, and the University of Sheffield. His awards include Soka’s Professor of the Year (2006) and San Diego State’s Professor of the Year (2005). Weiner’s current projects include a social history of leprosy in Japan and a comparative study of disease control in Chile and Japan.

His teaching spans courses like War and Memory in Pacific Asia and Human Rights and Civil Society in East Asia. He has contributed to over 30 scholarly articles and book chapters, analyzing topics from the Great Kanto Earthquake’s ethnic violence to the Pacific Basin’s geopolitical dynamics.