Asada Akira, born March 23, 1957, is a Japanese postmodern critic and curator, whose interests include contemporary arts, history of social thoughts, and economic philosophy. He is currently the Dean of the Graduate School at the Kyoto University of Art and Design.
Until March 2008, he served as an associate professor of economics at the Institute of Economic Research at Kyoto University (KIER). Asada is widely recognized as the author of a then bestselling book, "構造と力─記号論を超えて (Structure and Power--Beyond Semiotics)", which was published in 1983. (It is often translated as Structure and Force as well.) It is a dense examination into the post-modern and post-structuralist philosophy of late 20th century European thinkers. Asada described the work as Japan’s “first systematic introduction of certain strands in French philosophical thought, starting with a consideration of Lacan and Althusser, and then moving on to an account of Deleuze and Guattari, whose rather crazy re-reading of Marx I enthusiastically set to work in an analysis of contemporary capitalism — especially its patterns of consumption.