Kunio Hara is an associate professor of music history at the University of South Carolina. He holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and M.M. and B.M. degrees in music history and clarinet performance from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. His research interests include Puccini's operas, exoticism and Orientalism in music, nostalgia, and music in postwar Japan. His research has been funded through support of the National Endowment for the Humanities and University of South Carolina Office of the Provost.

Dr. Hara is the author of the book Joe Hisaishi's Soundtrack for My Neighbor Totoro (2020) as part of the Bloomsbury's 33 1/3 Japan Series that explores the intersection of music and nostalgia in a beloved anime classic by Hayao Miyazaki. His published works also include articles "Racial Politics of Madama Butterfly and Turandot" in Puccini in Context (2023), "Memories of La bohème and the Shadow of the débadeur in Puccini's Il tabarro," in Studi pucciniani, "'Per noi emigrati': Nostalgia in the Reception of Puccini's La fanciulla del West in New York City's Italian-Language Newspapers" in the Journal of the Society for American Music (click here to access the article), "The Death of Tamaki Miura: Performing Madama Butterfly During the Allied Occupation of Japan" in Music and Politics (click here to access the article),  "1 + 1 = 1: Measuring Time's Distance in Tōru Takemitsu's Nostalghia: In Memory of Andrei Tarkovskij" in Music and the Moving Image (click here to access the article), “Rudolf Dittrich’s Nippon Gakufu and Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly” in Music Research Forum, and “The Structure of Nostalgia in Puccini’s Operas” in Between Nostalgia, Utopia, and Realities. He is currently working on a monograph on the performance and reception history of Puccini's Madama Butterfly. 

He has presented papers at various national and international musicological and interdisciplinary conferences including the meetings of the American Musicological Society, The Society for American Music, Transnational Opera Studies Conference, and Music and the Moving Image Conference. 

He has also collaborated with various opera companies as an expert in Puccini's Madama Butterfly appearing in Boston Lyric Opera's 2021/22 virtual discussion series The Butterfly Process, working as a cultural consultant for Houston Grand Opera's 2024 production of the opera, and appearing in pre-concert lectures for the New Orleans Opera, Atlanta Opera, Portland Opera, and Opera Carolina. 

Dr. Hara teaches courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels on music history with an emphasis on nineteenth- and twentieth-century music. Dr. Hara is affiliate faculty at the Walker Institute Center for Asian Studies and European Studies Program. He has served previously as the president of the Southeast Chapter of the American Musicological Society.

Education

• 2012 Ph.D. Indiana University Jacobs School of Music 

• 2003 M.M. University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music 

• 2000 B.M. University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music 

Areas of Specialization

• Operas of Giacomo Puccini

• 19th- and 20th-century music

• Exoticism and Orientalism in music

• Nostalgia

• Music in Postwar Japan

Recent Courses

• MUSC 100L Recital Class Lab: Critical Listening

• MUSC 353 History of Western Music I

• MUSC 354 History of Western Music II

• MUSC 445 Historic Sounds of Columbia

• MUSC 744 Takemitsu and His Contemporaries

• MUSC 744 Puccini: Critical and Analytical Methods

• MUSC 744 Exoticism in Western Music

• MUSC 758 Romantic Music

Selected Publications

• “Racial Politics of Madama Butterfly and Turandot.” In Puccini in Context, edited by Alexandra Wilson, 205–214. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.

• “Memories of La bohème and the Shadow of the débardeur in Puccini’s Il tabarro.” Studi pucciniani 6 (2020): 73–86.

• Joe Hisaishi's Soundtrack for My Neighbor Totoro. 33 1/3 Japan, edited by Noriko Manabe. New York: Bloomsbury, 2020. 

• "'Per noi emigrati': Nostalgia in the Reception of Puccini's La fanciulla del West in New York City's Italian-Language Newspapers." Journal of the Society for American Music 13, no. 2 (2019): 177–94. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1752196319000063

• "The Death of Tamaki Miura: Performing Madama Butterfly During the Allied Occupation of Japan." Music and Politics 11, no. 1 (2017). http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/mp.9460447.0011.106

• "1 + 1 = 1: Measuring Time's Distance in Tōru Takemitsu's Nostalghia: In Memory of Andrei Tarkovskij." Music and the Moving Image 9, no. 3 (2016): 3–18. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/638863

• “The Structure of Nostalgia in Puccini’s Operas.” In Between Nostalgia, Utopia, and Realities, edited by Vesna Mikić, Ivana Perković, Tijana Popović Mlađenović, and Mirijana Veselinović-Hofman, 204–15. Belgrade: University of Arts, 2012.

• “Rudolf Dittrich’s Nippon Gakufu and Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.” Music Research Forum 19 (2004): 1–25.