Mari Yoshihara was born in New York City and raised in Tokyo, Japan. She earned her BA from the University of Tokyo in 1991 and her PhD in American Civilization from Brown University in 1997. Her areas of specialization include: U.S. cultural history; literary and cultural studies; women's/gender studies; studies of Orientalism, colonialism, and imperialism; U.S.-Asian relations; and Asian American studies.

Professor Yoshihara is the author of Embracing the East: White Women and American Orientalism (Oxford University Press, 2003). This interdisciplinary study examines a wide range of white women who were attracted to Japan and China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and shows how, through their engagement with Asia, these women found new forms of expression, power, and freedom that were often denied them in other realms of their lives in America. In addition to Embracing the East, she has published numerous articles, both in English and in Japanese, that address such themes as gender and Orientalism, border-crossing and globalization, language and literature, and tourism. Her most recent article, "The Flight of the Japanese Butterfly: Orientalism, Nationalism, and Performances of Japanese Womanhood," was published in the American Quarterly 56:4 (2004).

She has recently published a book in Japanese, Amerika no Daigakuin de Seiko suru Hoho [How to Succeed in Graduate School in America] (Chuko Shinsho, 2004). This book not only serves as a practical guidebook for Japanese students considering going to graduate school in the U.S. and those who are currently graduate students in the U.S., but it also provides an overview of the American university system and the academic profession. (http://www.hawaii.edu/ur/newsatuh/2004/0322/publications.htm)

With Yujin Yaguchi at University of Tokyo, she has co-edited, Gendai Amerika no Kiiwaado [Keywords of Contemporary America], which was published by Chuko Shinsho in August 2006. This book is a collection of 81 essays discussing keywords that explain contemporary American society and culture, especially after 9/11. The keywords range widely in topic from "Abu Ghraib scandal" and "Guantanamo" to "Online dating," "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," "You're Fired," and "Michelle Wie." The book aims to give Japanese readers a deepened understanding of the diversity and complexity of American culture from a variety of perspectives. The contributors to the collection include a number of UH faculty and graduate students as well as scholars from the continental United States and Japan.

Professor Yoshihara's most recent publication is Musicians from a Different Shore: Asians and Asian Americans in Classical Music (Temple University Press, 2007). Professor Yoshihara was once a serious student of piano and has considered pursuing a musical career. This book emerged out of what she calls a "productive tension between [her] musical past and [her] scholarly present." Using historical research, social and cultural analysis, and ethnographic fieldwork, this book explores how Asians and Asian Americans came to form such a presence in the field of classical music and what social and cultural significance one might draw from this phenomenon. Through interviews with approximately 100 musicians--including conductor Kent Nagano, violinist Cho-Liang Lin, pianist Margaret Leng Tan, and numerous other instrumentalists, singers, and composers-- Professor Yoshihara probes Asian and Asian American musicians' experiences and ideas about culture, identity, and music-making. As such, the book analyzes various facets of classical music which has become much more than a specifically Western art form. Immediately upon publication, the book has gotten enthusiastic reviews in venues
such as Publishers' Weekly, Far Eastern Economic Review, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.
http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/1776_reg.html

In addition to teaching and serving as Graduate Chair in American Studies, from 2005-08 Professor Yoshihara is also serving as the Director of the EWC-UH International Cultural Studies Graduate Certificate Program. (http://www2.hawaii.edu/~culture).

In 2007 the UH Graduate Division awarded her the Distinguished Graduate Mentoring Award. The award recognizes her achievements in providing guidance to new students, holding workshops to help in the students' career development process, assisting students in practicing their presentations for professional meetings and assisting in the job search.
See article from the Honolulu Advertiser.