Academic Associate
Sainsbury Institute Associate Professor in Japanese Art History, and Director of the Centre for Japanese Studies, University of East Anglia
Eriko Tomizawa-Kay is an art historian specialising in modern and contemporary Japanese art, with a particular focus on nihonga (modern Japanese-style painting), Okinawan visual culture, and transnational art history. She holds a PhD in Art History from SOAS, University of London, and is currently Sainsbury Institute Associate Professor in Japanese Art History, and Director of the Centre for Japanese Studies, in the School of Art and Art History at the University of East Anglia. She has also served as Toyota Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan’s Center for Japanese Studies (currently a CJS Affiliate) and as Visiting Research Associate at the Okinawa Prefectural University of Arts.
Her current research explores the intersections of visual art with diplomacy, identity, and memory, particularly within the contexts of Japan’s imperial legacies and postwar cultural politics. Emphasising contemporary Okinawan art, she investigates its role in shaping identity, articulating decolonial narratives, and defining regional aesthetics. Her work is grounded in close collaboration with Okinawan artists, museums, and academic institutions. She also curates exhibitions and leads interdisciplinary projects that bring Okinawan perspectives into global conversations in art history and curatorial practice.
Selected Publications
- Eriko Tomizawa-Kay, ‘Contested Bodies: Female imagery in pre-war Okinawa’, Japan Forum, vol.37, no.4. (2025): 467-492.
- Eriko Tomizawa-Kay, Megumi Machida, Hiroko Ikegami, and Toshio Watanabe eds., Okinawan Art in its Regional Context: Historical Overview and Contemporary Practice, Sainsbury Institute Occasional Paper 2. (Norwich: SISJAC, 2022).
- Eriko Tomizawa-Kay and Toshio Watanabe eds., East Asian Art History in Transnational Context. (NY: Routledge, 2019).
- Eriko Tomizawa-Kay, ‘Deconstructing Localism and Inventing Tradition and Identity: The Role of Modern Okinawan Painting (1630s – 1960s)’. In East Asian Art History in a Transnational Context, edited by Tomizawa-Kay, E. & Watanabe, T. (New York: Routledge, 2019), pp. 102-125.
- Eriko Tomizawa-Kay, ‘Art and Remembrance: Gima Hiroshi, the Marukis, and Representations of the Battle of Okinawa’, Mutual Images Journal, 5. (2018): 57-84.
- Eriko Tomizawa-Kay, ‘Changes in the Japanese art market with the emergence of the middle-class collector: A study of Hishida Shunsō (1874–1911)’, Journal of the History of Collections, Vol. 28, No.2. (2015): 261–277.