Photo by Devin Bittner.

Matthew Mewhinney is Associate Professor in the Department of Japanese Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). He received his Ph.D. in Japanese from the University of California, Berkeley, and taught at Boston University (2018–2019) and Florida State University (2019–2025) before moving to CUHK. His research interests include lyric poetry and theory, narrative, cinema, subjectivity, and translation.

Matt’s first book, Form and Feeling in Japanese Literati Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), examines how four writers transformed the Japanese literati (bunjin) tradition by creating new poetic forms of irony and lyricism. He was interviewed about the book on the “New Books Network” podcast.

He has two ongoing book projects: One explores the aesthetic experience of reading in Japanese literature. The other examines the poetry of Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916).

In 2020, Matt launched a Digital Humanities project, compiling Sōseki’s kanshi (Sinitic poetry) in the original with his English translations. For the updated URL, see here: https://sosekipoetry.org/

Matt is also the lead editor of “Color and Form,” a special issue of Review of Japanese Culture and Society, forthcoming in 2025.

Educational Background:

Ph.D., Japanese, University of California, Berkeley (2018)

M.A., Asian Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara (2009)

B.A., Chinese and Japanese, University of California, Santa Barbara (2006)

Contact
Email : mmewhinney@cuhk.edu.hk

Research Interests:

Japanese literature, culture, and cinema

Lyric poetry and theory

Narrative

Imagination

Subjectivity

Translation

Selected Publications:

• “The Reader is Hooked: Ema Saikō’s Poems on The Tale of Genji.” Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 17, no. 2 (Spring 2023): 243-273. 
• “The Rhythm of Breath in Natsume Sōseki’s Recollecting and Such.” Literature 3, no. 1 (2023): 94-111.
• “The Pheasant’s Call and the Sound of Sympathy.” Japanese Language and Literature 56, no. 1 (April 2022): 1-41.
• “Translating ‘Jamesian Precisions’ in Natsume Sōseki’s Light and Dark.” The Wenshan Review of Literature and Culture 15, no. 1 (December 2021): 77-113.