Professor Takenaka specializes in social and cultural history of modern Japan. Her research involves memory and historiography of the Asia-Pacific War, gender and peace activism, and history museums. Her teaching interests include gender, war and society, nationalism, memory studies, and visual culture. Prior to coming to UK, she has taught as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago and the University of Michigan.
Professor Takenaka is the author of two books. The first book, entitled Yasukuni Shrine: History, Memory, and Japan's Unending Postwar (University of Hawai'i Press, Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University, 2015), explores Yasukuni Shrine as a physical space, object of visual and spatial representation, and site of spatial practice in order to highlight the complexity of Yasukuni Shrine’s past and critique the official narratives that postwar debates have responded to. Her second book Mothers Against War: Gender, Motherhood, and Peace Activism in Cold War Japan (University of Hawai'i Press, 2025) examines the shifting relationships among motherhood, peace activism, and women's rights in the decades following Japan's defeat in 1945. It is the first scholarly monograph to make the connection between Japan's matricentric peace activism and the fight for women's rights. Research for this book has been funded by long-term research fellowships by Fulbright and the Japan Foundation.
