Haruo Shirane, Shincho Professor of Japanese Literature at Columbia University, is a specialist in Japanese literature and culture, with special interest in prose fiction, poetry, and drama; the interaction between popular and elite cultures; and issues of cultural memory. He is the author and editor of over twenty books. His most recent book, Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons (2012), explores the cultural construction of nature across a wide spectrum of media and arts.

Tomi Suzuki, Professor of Japanese Literature at Columbia University, is a specialist in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Japanese literature, with special interests in prose fiction and criticism; gender and genre; modernism and language reform; history of reading and canon formation. Her publications include Narrating the Self: Fictions of Japanese Modernity (1996) and Inventing the Classics: Modernity, National Identity, and Japanese Literature (2000).

David Lurie, Associate Professor of Japanese History and Literature at Columbia University, specializes in the literary, cultural, and intellectual history of premodern Japan. His research concerns the development of writing and literacy; the history of linguistic thought; and Japanese and comparative mythology. His first book, Realms of Literacy: Early Japan and the History of Writing (2011), treated the advent of Japanese inscription and the early development of literature and other modes of writing.