Mariko Tamanoi

Mariko Tamanoi is a Research Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), affiliated with the College of Social Sciences. Her work bridges historical anthropology and sociocultural analysis, focusing on colonialism, nationalism, and gender dynamics in East Asia, Mexico, and Spain. She holds a Ph.D. from Northwestern University (1982) and has held positions at institutions including Keio University and Waseda University. Her research critically examines how marginalized groups negotiate state power, particularly through memory and postcolonial perspectives.

Her groundbreaking studies include Memory Maps: The State and Manchuria in Postwar Japan (2009) and Under the Shadow of Nationalism (1998), which center on Japanese wartime civilians and rural women's activism. Tamanoi’s projects investigate transnational memory networks, colonial displacement of Japanese settlers, and the interplay between gendered labor and national narratives. She has advised prominent scholars such as Brenda Jenike Robb and Haeng-Ja Chung.

Her publications span journals like Journal of Asian Studies and American Ethnologist, addressing themes from factory women’s resistance to postwar orphans in East Asia. Tamanoi’s work challenges Eurocentric historiography and emphasizes grassroots perspectives in reconstructing contested histories.