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My academic background is Political Science and East Asian Area Studies. Throughout my studies, I have been fascinated by the possibility to combine social science methodologies and area specialty in analyzing and explaining social phenomena. My research relies on these two disciplinary pillars.

My research is about the political economy of Japanese popular culture in East and Southeast Asia. My attempt is to explore the expansion of Japanese cultural industries by using some of the same analytical and conceptual tools that were used to examine the oversea expansion of other Japanese industries, such as automobiles and electronics. In particular, I examine the creation of regional markets for Japanese music and TV programs, the externalization of Japanese cultural production formats, and the overall influence Japanese popular culture has on the development of the local cultural industries. As a part of this research, I conducted repeated fieldworks in Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, Bangkok and Seoul. In each city I closely examined the creation of markets for Japanese music and TV programs and the overall influence Japanese culture has on the development of the local cultural industries.

Recently, I have been conducting a comparative study of the emergence of cultural industries in East and Southeast Asia and their impact on the regionalization process. I am also studying the Japanese government response to the success of Japanese popular culture abroad and the corresponding policy it initiates.