This year the Michiko N. Wilson prize was awarded to two students, Miranda Mobley and Nikolas Dillery.

Mobley's paper, entitled "Japan's Female Workforce: Why Management Remains Out of Reach," was written for PLCP 3500 (Japanese Politics).  It thoroughly critiques Shinzo Abe’s policies of Womenomics, designed to increase women's place in the workforce. These policies were adopted in 2014 as specific policy goals and set numerical targets for 2020.  Mobley identified some specific areas where policies were changed and targets reached, but honed in on the failure of Abe's economic policies to grow the share of women managers because they leave untouched the division of labor in the home, the dual track structure of the workplace, and the excessive work expectations employers have for career employees.  The paper was outstanding for its skillful use of sources and well-structured argumentation.

Dillery's paper, entitled "Familial Pressures and Koremori as a Representation of the Heike at Large," was written for JPTR 3400 (Tales of the Samurai).  It took up the character of Taira no Koremori, in The Tale of the Heike, Japan's most famous warrior epic, which chronicles the downfall of the Taira clan at the end of the twelfth century.  Because Koremori is one of only a few characters who appears in multiple books within the epic, his story seems to have held unusual appeal for the tale's initial audience. As Dillery notes, Koremori's place in the tale is characterized by his tragic struggle to reconcile his feelings for the wife and children he abandoned back in the capital with his need to support his senior male kin in exile.  The paper provided an original thesis in this regard by providing apt comparisons with other characters whose situations resembled that of Koremori, and moreover scrupulously and copiously cited the text of The Tale of the Heike, which required keeping track of multiple episodes within the sprawling narrative.