Daiwa Scholars in Japanese Studies 2025
DSJS 2025 Thalia, Jasmine and Leo at the Foundation on 29 August 2025
The Daiwa Foundation is pleased to announce the selection of three new Daiwa Scholars in Japanese Studies for 2025. Announcing the new scholars, Jason James, Director General of the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, said:
“We selected three new Daiwa Scholars in Japanese Studies on Friday 7th March. This year, all three will be studying in Tokyo – one has started there already. Two are looking at different aspects of modern Japanese culture, with one focussing on the influence of manga, anime and computer games on transmasculine culture, while the other is looks at underground subcultures and their links to the genre known as eroguro. The third scholar is focussing on literature linked to Japan’s early 20th century colonial expansion.
You can see the Scholars’ profiles (at the time of selection) with photographs via this PDF.
DSJS 2025 PROFILES with photos
About the scholars
Jasmine Boothe-Henry
Jasmine is currently completing a BA in Japanese with Chinese at the University of Oxford. She spent her year abroad at Kobe University from 2022 to 2023. Jasmine’s academic interests deal with cultural identity as shaped through the prisms of gender, sexuality and colonialisation. As part of her degree she will translate the Akutagawa Prize-winning Island Where the Spider Lilies Bloom by Taiwanese author Li Kotomi. Her undergraduate dissertation is an analysis of how translingual authors challenge traditional linguistic and cultural boundaries. Jasmine’s thesis will highlight Li’s innovative use of the Japanese language which borrows readings and syntax from Chinese, Taiwanese and Ryukyuan dialects. Jasmine will begin an MA in International Culture and Communication Studies at Waseda University from September 2025, in which she will focus on literature and media written in Japanese by authors from diverse backgrounds to understand how colonialism has informed the construction of gendered identities and national narratives in the East Asian context.
Leo McDonagh
Growing up, Leo consumed a variety of Japanese media, practised judo for a few years, and sought out a tutor to learn Japanese. Leo went on to complete a BA in Japanese at the University of Leeds in 2020. During his degree he spent a year abroad at Waseda University. On completion of his BA, Leo worked freelance as a translator of manga and video games from Japanese into English, before spending two years in Frankfurt am Main working as an in-house game translator at Nintendo of Europe. In April 2024 he took up a MEXT Scholarship to study at Tokyo University, beginning a Master of Arts and Sciences in IT and Society in Asia. His research project is on the influence of Japanese popular media on transmasculine culture. Leo will analyse Japanese popular media (e.g., anime, manga, video games) and their influence on transmasculine culture domestically and internationally. He will examine to what extent aspects of transmasculinity are culture-specific and to what extent they are cross-cultural, contributing to global gender studies and queer theory.
Thalia Roychowdhury
Thalia Roychowdhury is currently completing a BA in Japanese at the University of Oxford. She spent her year abroad at Kobe University from 2022 to 2023, during which time she undertook an internship with the Yamamoto Noh Theatre and wrote a paper on the underground subcultures she came into contact with through attending live theatre and music performances in Osaka. Thalia returned to Japan in July 2024 for the Come on Out Japan internship during which she mentored Japanese high school and university students. Thalia will begin an MA in International Culture and Communication Studies at Waseda University from September 2025. She is interested in how underground subcultures use the visual culture of eroguro, an abbreviation of erotic grotesque nonsense, as a means of sociocultural protest in modern Japan. Through her research, she intends to draw attention to engaging and oftentimes underrepresented aspects of contemporary Japanese subculture.