Colby College
4000 Mayflower Hill
Waterville, ME 04901
P: 207-859-4000
 
Tamae K. Prindle
Oak Professor of East Asian Language and Literature [Japanese]
East Asian Studies



Phone: 207-859-4416
Fax: 859-4705
Email:

Mailing Address:
4406 Mayflower Hill
Waterville, Maine 04901-8844

Semester Schedule
Education

Tamae K. Prindle received her B.A. in English Literature from the State University of New York at Binghamton. She transferred to SUNY Binghamton from the Gakushuin University French Literature Department in Tokyo. She earned her first M.A. in English Literature from Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, her second M.A. in East Asian Studies from Cornell University, and her Ph. D. in Modern Japanese Literature with a minor in pre-modern Japanese literature and anthropology from Cornell University.

Areas of Expertise:
  • Japanese language and literature
  • Japanese business novels
  • Japanese cinema, especially feminist perspectives on
  • Women

View Curriculum Vitae

Professional Information

She is currently the Oak Professor of East Asian Studies and the Chair of the East Asian Studies Department at Colby College. Her interests focus on Japanese language, modern Japanese literature, Japanese cinema, and feminism. She pioneered the introduction of Japanese "business novels" to the West. Her works on business novels have been written up in Harper's (June 1986), Far Eastern Economic Review (May 1990), Across the Board (May 1990), The New York Times (May 1993 and October 1996), and others and have been adopted as textbooks in many colleges and universities in the United States. She has actively published and given presentations on Japanese language, literature, and cinema. She is also known as the author of many Hyper Card grammar drills.

Other Courses Taught
Course Course Title
FS132 Global Perspectives on Gender ...
EA332 Modern Japanese Literature
EA232 Literature of Japanese
EA457 Seminar on Japanese Culture
EA233 Money and Society in Japanese Literature
EA271 Women in Japanese Fiction & Cinema
Coursework

Websites:
Japanese at Colby
JLTA of New England
East Asian Studies at Colby

Current Research

Women in Japanese Cinema: Feminist Analyses of Japanese Films.

Publications

Labor Relations: Japanese Business Novel (University Press of America 1994) This is an introduction and edited translation of Kazuo Watanabe's novel about Japanese department store management.





Kinjo the Corporate Bouncer and Other Stories from Japanese Business (Weatherhill, 1989) is a reprint of the above book by another publisher for the non-U.S. markets.





The Dark Side of Japanese Business: Three "Industry Novels" (M.E. Sharpe, 1996) is an introduction and translation of Ikk Shimizu's two novellas and one novel. Both the introduction and the novel explain the delicate relationship between a Japanese automobile maker and its parts makers.





Takuboku Ishikawa (1885-1912) is one of the best-known poets in Japan. Most of the poems in On Knowing Oneself Too Well: Selected Poems of Ishikawa Takuboku(2010) come from Takuboku's five poetry collections, and many use the traditional tanka format of 5-7-5 syllables.





Made in Japan and Other Japanese Business Novels (M.E. Sharpe, 1989) This is an introduction and translation of seven Japanese business novels by leading Japanese business novel writers, Sabur Shiroyama, Ikk Shimizu, Ry Takasugi, Taichi Sakaiya, and Takashi Kaik. These novellas describe what the expression, "made in Japan" used to imply, the spirit of the Japanese bank industry, an underground profession called skaiya, the mechanism of personnel decisions, the impact on the economy of the baby boom generation, and the CM competition.