Takeshi Watanabe

Takeshi Watanabe is an Associate Professor of East Asian Studies at Wesleyan University's College of East Asian Studies. He specializes in Japanese literature and history, with particular expertise in Heian period court society and women's writing.

His research focuses on:

• Classical Japanese historical narratives
• Women's literary contributions in medieval Japan
• Food culture and culinary history
• Samurai identity construction
• Foundations of East Asian cultural identity

Professor Watanabe's scholarship reveals how narrative forms were employed to address historical trauma and construct cultural identity, particularly through women's writing in the Heian court. His work on food culture examines how eating practices reflect broader social structures and historical changes in Japanese society. He argues that historical tales functioned as 'affective history' to exorcise embittered spirits through literary resonances rather than bloodline genealogies.

Professor Watanabe was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure effective July 1, 2020. His major publication is Flowering Tales: Women Exorcising History in Heian Japan (Harvard University Press, 2020), which presents a new reading of A Tale of Flowering Fortunes.

He teaches popular courses including:

• Japanese Culture Through Food
• Life in Premodern Japan
• Foundations of East Asia
• Samurai as Expressions of Japanese Identity

Professor Watanabe is currently working on a second book about premodern Japanese attitudes toward food and eating, and is translating Utsuho monogatari (The Tale of the Hollow Tree) and the zokuhen (last ten chapters of A Tale of Flowering Fortunes). Previously, he taught in East Asian Studies, History and Art History at Connecticut College.