Michele M. Mason is an Associate Professor of modern Japanese cultural studies at the University of Maryland. She is author of Dominant Narratives of Colonial Hokkaido and Imperial Japan: Envisioning the Periphery and the Modern Nation-State and co-editor, with Helen J.S. Lee, of Reading Colonial Japan: Text, Context, and Critique. Mason also co-produced the short documentary film entitled Witness to Hiroshima (2008, dir. Kathy Sloane).