Takuya Tsunoda

Takuya Tsunoda serves as Assistant Professor of Japanese Film and Media in the Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures at Columbia University, with prior teaching appointments at Colgate University and the University of Chicago. Currently on leave for spring 2022, he maintains his office in 416 Kent Hall (contact: (212) 854-5040, tt2101@columbia.edu).

His academic credentials include:

• BA: Waseda University (2002), Columbia University (2005)
• MA: Columbia University (2008)
• PhD: Yale University (2015)

Dr. Tsunoda's research centers on institutional-media interplay through historical and theoretical lenses, examining how technologies shape socio-cultural practices and knowledge formations. His seminal work investigates Iwanami Productions' evolution from educational/science film provider to New Cinema pioneer, arguing that Japan's 1960s cinematic revolution originated in institutionalized audio-visual pedagogy rather than political radicalism. Current explorations extend to media reflexivity, alpine photography, insect ecology, children's media engagement, and diegesis in contemporary visual culture.
Teaching: Courses include East Asian Cinema, Japanese Contemporary Media Culture, Japanese New Wave Modernism, Documentary Film Studies, and Critical Approaches to East Asian Theory.

His publication trajectory (2018-2022) reveals consistent focus on postwar Japanese media archaeology, connecting educational film, industrial cinema, and New Wave movements through archival analysis. Key themes include cross-medial academicism, mediascape transformations, and the socio-political dimensions of visual pedagogy in reconstructing cinematic modernism.

Active research trajectories include transnational New Wave parameters, television documentary studies, and ecological media representations, with ongoing book project examining Iwanami Productions' institutional legacy.