Biography

Kunio Hara is an associate professor of music history at the University of South Carolina with an emphasis on nineteenth and twentieth-century music. His research areas include Puccini's operas, as well as exoticism and Orientalism in music, nostalgia, and music in postwar Japan. His publications include a monograph, Joe Hisaishi’s Soundtrack for "My Neighbor Totoro" (2020), a book chapter, "Racial Politics of Madama Butterfly and Turandot" in Puccini in Context (2023), and several journal articles including "Memories of La bohème and the Shadow of the débardeur in Puccini's Il trittico" in Studi pucciniani (2020), "'Per noi emigrati': Nostalgia in the Reception of Puccini's La fanciulla del West in New York City's Italian-Language Newspapers," in Journal of the Society for American Music (2019), and “The Death of Tamaki Miura: Performing Madama Butterfly During the Allied Occupation of Japan" in Music and Politics (2017). Hara has presented his research at various national and international musicological conferences, as well as public talks for the Metropolitan Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, Atlanta Opera, New Orleans Opera, and Portland Opera. He holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.