Laura Miller (editor) - Diva Nation: Female Icons from Japanese Cultural History

Ideas for this edited volume stretch back to at least 2012, when a group of us came together at the University of Missouri-St. Louis for a symposium on Pop Heroines and Female Icons of Japan. The gathering was hosted with support from the Eiichi Shibusawa-Seigo Arai Endowed Professorship in Japanese Studies, International Studies Programs, and a grant from the Northeast Asia Council, Association for Asian Studies. Fellow symposium participants who did not ultimately contribute chapters but were still inspirational for the project include Hideko Abe, Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase, Masayo Kaneko, and Karen Nakamura. The chapters in this volume by Bardsley, Copeland, Yano, and Miller were also presented as papers on the 2013 panel Diva Nation: Female Icons from Japanese Cultural History at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting in San Diego. We owe gratitude to discussant Karen Nakamura for her insightful comments and to William Tsutsui for being a gracious chair.

Our editor at the University of California Press was the incomparable Reed Malcolm, who is always willing to help out the bad girls. We thank him for the encouragement and interest in our concept. We also thank our editorial assistant Zuha Khan for her patience and hard work. The art department staff at the press are amazing. We would like to thank the two anonymous readers of the manuscript for their insightful comments.

We were fortunate to receive permission for many fine images of divas. We thank the following people and publishers: Yamamuro Keishiro and Otsuka Kazuhiko of the Visionary Company Ltd., as well as the artist no Yuriko; the Takumi Promotion Company, Hiromatsu Kozue, and the Kojiki Yaoyorozu Kami Ukiyoe Museum in Hita City and So-hyun Chun; the Rev. Lawrence Koichi Barrish and the Tsubaki Grand Shrine of America; Okubo Masami and Kirino Natsuo; Corinna Barsan and Grove Atlantic; Shimoda-san and Heibonsha; Ando Chieko and Shinoda Seiji of the Permission and Publication Department, and the Idemitsu Bijutsukan; Koizumi Takayoshi and Gakken Kyiku Shuppan; Yamauchi Hideyuki and the Yamatokriyama City Tourist Association; the artist Debuchi Ryoichiro; Stephen Herrin and Monash University Library; Baldwin Saho and Hanagiri Madoka of Bungeishunju Ltd. (Bungei Shunj); and Endo Tetsuya and Kobayashi Jun of the Literature and Non-Fiction Department, Kadokawa Corporation. Mahalo to Dania and Mayumi Oda, and many thanks to Rebecca Jennison for helping us find the perfect cover image.

Many thanks to the sculptor and manga artist Rokudenashiko (Igarashi Megumi). We are thrilled that a reigning diva of the art world added allure to our volume with an adorable Manko-chan manga. We are grateful to Anne Ishii for facilitating her contribution.

We owe gratitude to our respective universities, the University of Missouri-St. Louis and Washington University in St. Louis, for technical and financial support. We are grateful for the brilliance and collegiality of all the contributors to this project. Finally, we received input and comments from friends in various settings, but special mention goes to the Chesterfield Writers Camp, which was extraordinarily memorable and productive.

Laura Miller and Rebecca Copeland

August 2017