He teaches in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and is a faculty member of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute. His book-length publications include Seiji to daidokoro: Akita-ken joshi sanseiken undōshi (Politics and the kitchen: A history of the women’s suffrage movement in Akita Prefecture [in Japanese], 1986), Cartographies of Desire: Male-Male Sexuality in Japanese Discourse, 1600–1950 (1999), JAPANimals: History and Culture in Japan’s Animal Life (coedited with Brett L. Walker, 2005), and Pictures and Things: Bridging Visual and Material Culture in Japan (special issue of Impressions: The Journal of the Japanese Art Society of America, coedited with Jordan Sand, 2009).