Her research interests lie in changing gender, sexuality, and class dynamics in contemporary Japan. Her first book, Staged Seduction: Selling Dreams in a Tokyo Host Club, (2016 Stanford University Press) theorizes the commercialization of feelings, emotions, and intimate relationships among socially marginalized population —the youth and women— in Japan’s service-centered economy. Her second book project, tentatively entitled “Possessive Individualism in the Age of Postfeminism and Neoliberalism through the Lens of Japan's Adult Video Industry,” will explore human affect ―hope, fear, and a sense of vulnerability― in the analysis of 21st century capitalism, complicating such legal categories as human rights and individual consent especially when sexual and economic exploitation are carried out in the name of individual choice.