About Us

Who we are

Trans Pacific Press is a 23 year old publishing firm established in Melbourne, Australia and now functioning out of Tokyo, Japan.

We have a portfolio of 200+ titles in the area of Sociology and Humanities, majority of which are on Japan and Asia.

We are the only academic publishing house that translates scholarly books originally published in Japanese into English and produces them for worldwide circulation. In social sciences and humanities, almost all local publishers in Japan solely publish works written in Japanese, while major international publishers tend to only consider manuscripts written and submitted in English, a situation which has long concealed Japanese scholarship from global debate. To address this dilemma, we have built a bridge between Japanese scholars and the outside world.

Expanding its reach, we have been co-publishing several book series in association with Japan’s influential university publishing houses, including Kyoto University Press and the University of Tokyo Press.

 

Our History

Trans Pacific Press was founded in 1999 by Yoshio Sugimoto, Professor of Sociology at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia, to promote Japan’s scholarship in the social sciences and humanities around the world.

In 2020, the 20th anniversary of TPP, Prof Sugimoto retired from active publishing after producing some 150 titles and relocated TPP from Melbourne to Tokyo, Japan. The new Managing Director, Yuko Uematsu, has taken the reins of the company, with Prof Sugimoto remaining as an advisor. With 20 years’ experience in academic sales and marketing, Yuko is developing TPP’s eBook range and intends to expand TPP’s global distribution networks into European, Asian and Pacific countries, while maintaining the existing networks in the US and Canada.

TPP will continue to publish high quality books of significant academic value and bring Japan’s intellectual achievements to the international stage.

Our Leaders

Director

UEMATSU Yuko

UEMATSU Yuko is Director of Trans Pacific Press. Yuko graduated from the University of Tsukuba, with a major in Anthropology. After working with mass-media companies, including a publisher and newspaper company, she joined the language solution provider Crimson Interactive Pvt. Ltd, based in Mumbai, India. She was appointed as the first CEO of its Japan subsidiary, a position she held for more than 13 years. During that time, she contributed to growing the company from 15 employees to more than 450. While managing the company, she continued her lifework of interviewing scholars in Japan to ask what difficulties they faced communicating in English language and what they do to try to overcome the English language barrier. Based on these interviews, she published “English, idiot!” (2009). The book has been widely read by Japanese audiences, from English learners to businessmen and teachers.

Adviser

SUGIMOTO Yoshio

SUGIMOTO Yoshio is a Japanese-Australian sociologist based in Melbourne. He is currently Professor Emeritus at La Trobe University.

After graduating from the Faculty of Law, Kyoto University, he worked for the Mainichi Shimbun Newspaper in Tokyo for three years before moving to the United States in 1967. Upon obtaining a Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Pittsburgh in 1973, he began teaching in the Department of Sociology at La Trobe University where he was appointed Professor of Sociology and Dean of Social Sciences in 1988. In the same year, he was elected to a Fellowship of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He was Foundation Director of the Japanese Studies Centre in Melbourne, established in 1981. His book An Introduction to Japanese Society, published by Cambridge University Press, is widely read as an authoritative academic text on Japanese society and entered its fifth edition in 2021.

In 1999, he founded Trans Pacific Press and directed it for 20 years. Retiring in June 2020 at the age of 80, he invited Yuko to head the press and make a fresh start in Tokyo.

 

Our Partners

  • Kyoto University Press
  • University of Tokyo Press
  • APU (Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University)
  • Tohoku University
  • Kwansei Gakuin University