A World of Edo Art
Linda Hoaglund is a bilingual, bicultural filmmaker born and raised in Japan. She attended Japanese public schools and graduated from Yale University. She has directed and produced five feature-length films about art and the U.S.-Japan relationship, including the documentary Edo Avant Garde. She has also subtitled three-hundred Japanese films, including Seven Samurai and Spirited Away.
E Roon Kang is a design educator and creative director with a background in building programs and studios that explore the evolving role of design in technological contexts. He teaches at KAIST, where he also directs the Visual Instruments Lab.
Cody Horne is a filmmaker born and raised on Oahu, Hawai'i. She served as the Digital Editor for the Smithsonian's "Investigating Japan's Edo Avant Garde" curriculum. She has contributed to several award-winning short films, including those featured at festivals such as Festival de Cannes and HIFF.
Kasamatsu Norimichi is one of Japan's preeminent cinematographers, with seventy fiction films under his belt, and the director of photography for Edo Avant Garde. He has been nominated for Best Cinematographer at the Japanese Academy Awards in 2006, 2008, 2011, 2012, 2022, and awarded it in 2014. In 2023 he received the Jijuhōshō (Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon) from the Japanese emperor.
Angela Miesle is a recipient of a 2023 Scholastic Art and Writing Outstanding Educator Award with over twenty-five years of experience with curriculum development and the creation and teaching of dynamic activities that inspire and engage students of all ages. She teaches East Asian Art and AP Art History at Wayne Trace Jr./Sr. High School in Haviland, Ohio.
Samejima Tamayo is an art writer, translator, and sumi-e ink painter. She writes and translates texts, books, articles, and exhibition texts. Her Japanese translations include The Vincent van Gogh Atlas (Gohho no chizuchō, Kodansha, 2016), The Story of Art Without Men (Dansei no inai bijutsushi, PIE International, 2025), and numerous other works.
Shimao Arata is an art historian specializing in the history of sumi ink painting. He taught at the Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Tama Art University, and Gakushuin University. He is a visiting professor at the Yokohama University of Art and Design, a board member of the Nezu Museum, and an editorial board member of Kokka.
Yukio Lippit is professor of the History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University and has also taught at the Universities of Tokyo, Heidelberg, Los Andes (Bogota), and Campinas (Brazil). His book, Painting of the Realm: The Kano House of Painters in Seventeenth-Century Japan (2012), was awarded the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award and the John Whitney Hall Book Prize by the Association of Asian Studies.
James Ulak has been a distinguished participant in several spheres of cultural dialogue between Japan and the U.S. for more than forty years. In 2010, the Government of Japan conferred the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette in recognition of Ulak's exceptional achievement in strengthening Japan-US bilateral relations in cultural exchange. Currently a consultant, Ulak, holds the title of Curator Emeritus, National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, where he served in curatorial and administrative roles from 1995 to 2019.
Melanie Ide has worked for over thirty years in the cultural field as an interpretive planner, exhibition designer, program developer, and museum executive. Prior to her tenure as President & CEO of Bishop Museum in Honolulu, she was Principal at Ralph Appelbaum Associates, the multi-disciplinary, international museum planning and design firm.
Mikki Lee is a first generation Korean American freelance illustrator and designer based in Los Angeles, California.