About Me

Janine Midori Fujioka is a teacher, writer, and calligraphic artist with a passion for Japanese anime, manga, noh drama, taiko drumming, ikebana, haiku, and shodō. She is gosei, a fifth generation American of Japanese descent, with roots in California and Hawai'i. Since 1989, she taught Japanese Film and Visual Culture, Asian Literature, Asian Pacific American Studies, Women’s Studies and Community Organizing, connecting with approximately twelve thousand students over thirty years. She hopes her courses are perspective-altering experiences that transform students’ views of the social and intercultural world they live in. Her creative writing projects explore the Japanese American family through multiple lenses, with a focus on nisei (second generation) experiences of displacement, loss, and survival during the 1930’s and 1940’s.

Japanese Carnelian Ink on Washi
 "Place"

She is a recipient of the Kathryn Wasserman Davis Fellowship for Peace at Middlebury College, a National Endowment for the Humanities-Asian Studies Development Program Teaching Fellowship at the East-West Center of Hawai'i, a Freeman Foundation of Asia-Japan Studies Association Teaching Fellowship at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa among others. The Djerassi Resident Artists Program features her work. Fujioka attended Scripps College, Waseda University (Tokyo, Japan), UCLA, UC Berkeley, Middlebury College, and Bread Loaf School of English.