| Position | Associate Professor |
|---|---|
| Faculty | Oriental History |
| Graduate School | Asian History |
| Department | Oriental History |
Career
| November 2005: | Ph.D. (Letters), Kyoto University |
| April 2006: | Appointed to the Faculty of Letters, Hokkaido University |
| April 2016: | Appointed to the Faculty of Letters, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo |
Research Areas
West Asian History, Social History, History of Cultural Exchange
1) Pilgrimage to Sacred Sites
Her research focuses on Shi'ite pilgrimages to the Imam mausoleums in Najaf and Karbala in Iraq, as well as Mashhad in Iran, and investigates pilgrimages to shrines of saints, Imamzadehs and mazars in Islamic societies. Her major works include Shi'ite Pilgrimage to the Sacred 'Atabat, Kyoto University Press, 2007 (in Japanese); “Pilgrims beyond the Border: Immigration at Khanaqin and Its Procedures in the Nineteenth Century,” Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko, 72, 2015, pp. 99-124; “Les Lieux de Commémoration et les Funérailles Qājār: « Le Transport des Corps » dans la Sciété Chiite,” Anna Caiozzo (ed.) in Mythes, Rites et Émotions: Les Funérailles le Long de la Route de la Soie, Paris: Honoré Champion, 2016, pp. 249-263; and Tomoko Morikawa and Christoph Werner (eds.), Vestiges of the Razavi Shrine, Āthār al-Rażavīya: A Catalogue of Endowments and Deeds to the Shrine of Imam Riza in Mashhad, Tokyo: The Toyo Bunko, 2017. Her recent research is on comparative social and religious history of holy sites and pilgrimage around the world.
2) Urban History of West Asia
Her recent research particularly focuses on cities in West Asia from the medieval to modern periods. She is interested in how various people with different backgrounds, such as religion, place of origin, and ethnicity, interact with each other and form urban societies. Her edited volumes include West Asia Deciphered through Cities: History, Society, and Culture, Bensei Publishers, 2021 (in Japanese).
3) Early Modern Armenian Networks and Religious Minority Studies
She is researching how religious minorities such as Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians have maintained their communities and identities, while exploring the relationship between Muslim regimes and minorities under the Safavid Empire of Iran and neighboring empires. Her current research particularly focuses on the globally active Armenian merchants of the early modern period. Her achievements in this field include Tomoko Morikawa (ed.), Acta Asiatica (Bulletin of the Institute of Eastern Culture) No. 123 <Special Issue: Armenian Merchants and Their Communities in Early Modern Eurasia>, The Tōhō Gakkai, Tokyo, 2022.
