Podcasts by New Books in Japanese Studies
Interviews with Scholars of Japan about their New Books
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On John Hersey's "Hiroshima" from 2022-10-07T08:00
In August of 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Less than a year later, American journalist John Hersey traveled to Hiroshima and intervi...
ListenOn Murasaki Shikibu's "The Tale of Genji" from 2022-10-06T08:00
We don’t even know the real name of the 11th century author Murasaki Shikibu. But we do know that her book, The Tale of Genji, is arguably one of the most influential Japanese texts to date. Genji ...
ListenOn Inazō Nitobe's "Bushido: The Soul of Japan" from 2022-08-25T08:00
Nitobe Inazō wanted to explain Japan to Westerners, particularly morality as it is taught in Japanese society. He was born a Samurai in 1862. In his book Bushido: The Soul of Japan, Inazō Nitobe ex...
ListenTobias Harris, "The Iconoclast: Shinzo Abe and the New Japan" (Hurst, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Abe Shinz? is seen today through many lenses: as the longest-serving prime minister in the history of Japan; as a pragmatic leader with a consistent policy vision and a commitment to the art of sta...
ListenSujung Kim, "Shinra Myojin and Buddhist Networks of the East Asian 'Mediterranean'" (U Hawaii Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Shinra Myojin and Buddhist Networks of the East Asian “Mediterranean” (University of Hawaii Press, 2020) is a fascinating study of the transcultural underpinnings of Medieval East Asian Buddhist tr...
ListenSuma Ikeuchi, "Jesus Loves Japan: Return Migration and Global Pentecostalism in a Brazilian Diaspora" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 1990, the Japanese government introduced the Nikkei-jin (Japanese descendant) visa and since then it has attracted more than 190,000 Nikkei Brazilian nationals to Japan. In Jesus Loves Japan: Re...
ListenFrank Jacob, "Japanese War Crimes during World War II: Atrocity and the Psychology of Collective Violence" (Praeger, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When you mention Japanese War crimes in World War Two, you’ll often get different responses from different generations. The oldest among us will talk about the Bataan Death March. Younger people, c...
ListenDavid Fedman, "Seeds of Control: Seeds of Control: Japan’s Empire of Forestry in Colonial Korea" (U Washington Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
David Fedman's Seeds of Control: Seeds of Control: Japan’s Empire of Forestry in Colonial Korea (University of Washington Press, 2020) is hard to categorize. In a good way. Put simply, it is a broa...
ListenNoel John Pinnington, "A New History of Medieval Japanese Theatre: Noh and Ky?gen from 1300 to 1600" (Springer, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Noel Pinnington's A New History of Medieval Japanese Theatre: Noh and Ky?gen from 1300 to 1600 (Palgrave, 2019) traces the history of noh and ky?gen, the first major Japanese theatrical arts. Going...
ListenElizabeth Son, "Embodied Reckonings: 'Comfort Women,' Performance, and Transpacific Redress" (U Michigan Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In a bustling city-center of Seoul, women in yellow vests protesting over the “final” resettlement between the Japanese and Korean governments every Wednesday is an iconic sight, testifying to the ...
ListenCharlotte Eubanks, "The Art of Persistence: Akamatsu Toshiko and the Visual Cultures of Transwar Japan" (U Hawaii Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Art of Persistence: Akamatsu Toshiko and the Visual Cultures of Transwar Japan (U Hawaii Press, 2019) examines the relations between art and politics in transwar Japan, exploring these via a mi...
ListenBill Sewell, "Constructing Empire: The Japanese in Changchun, 1905-45" (UBC Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What happens to everyday-life in a city when it becomes subsumed into an empire? Who becomes responsible for the everyday building and management of the new imperial enclave? How do local residents...
ListenMatjaz Ursic and Heide Imai, "Creativity in Tokyo: Revitalizing a Mature City" (Palgrave, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Creativity in Tokyo: Revitalizing a Mature City (Palgrave, 2020), Heide Imai and Matjaz Ursic focues on overlooked contextual factors that constitute the urban creative climate or innovative urb...
ListenWoojeong Joo, "Cinema of Ozu Yasujiro: Histories of the Everyday" (Edinburgh UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
One of the most well regarded of non-Western film directors, responsible for acknowledged classics like Tokyo Story (1953), Ozu Yasujiro worked during a period of immense turbulence for Japan and i...
ListenGracia Liu-Farrer, "Immigrant Japan: Mobility and Belonging in an Ethno-nationalist Society" (Cornell UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Immigrant Japan? Sounds like a contradiction, but as Gracia Liu-Farrer shows in Immigrant Japan Mobility and Belonging in an Ethno-nationalist Society (Cornell University Press, 2020), millions of ...
ListenWilliam C. Hedberg, "The Japanese Discovery of Chinese Fiction: The Water Margin and the Making of a National Canon" (Columbia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The classic Chinese novel The Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan) tells the story of a band of outlaws in twelfth-century China and their insurrection against the corrupt imperial court. Imported into Japa...
ListenWilliam W. Kelly, "The Sportsworld of the Hanshin Tigers: Professional Baseball in Modern Japan" (University of California Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Baseball has been Japan's most popular sport for over a century. In The Sportsworld of the Hanshin Tigers: Professional Baseball in Modern Japan (University of California Press, 2018), anthropologi...
ListenKelly A. Hammond, "China's Muslims and Japan's Empire: Centering Islam in World War II" (UNC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The 1930s-40s expansion of the Japanese empire was marked by significant interest among Japan-based scholars and policy-makers in China’s Muslim population and how best to write them into a new pan...
ListenFabio Rambelli, “Spirits and Animism in Contemporary Japan” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019) from 2020-09-28T09:00:15
In Japan, a country popularly perceived as highly secularized and technologically advanced, ontological assumptions about spirits (tama or tamashii) seem to be quite deeply ingrained in the cultura...
ListenAnn-elise Lewallen, “The Fabric of Indigeneity: Ainu Identity, Gender, and Settler Colonialism in Japan” (U New Mexico Press, 2016) from 2020-09-17T09:00:34
The Fabric of Indigeneity: Ainu Identity, Gender, and Settler Colonialism in Japan (University of New Mexico Press) is a recent addition to the growing scholarship on Ainu identity and settler colo...
ListenAdam Broinowski, “Cultural Responses to Occupation in Japan: The Performing Body During and After the Cold War” (Bloomsbury 2016) from 2020-08-25T09:00:56
In Cultural Responses to Occupation in Japan: The Performing Body During and After the Cold War (Bloomsbury 2016), Adam Broinowski analyzes the emergence of Ankoku Butoh (dance of darkness) in the ...
ListenNozomi Naoi, “Yumeji Modern: Designing the Everyday in Twentieth-Century Japan” (U Washington Press, 2020) from 2020-08-05T09:00:29
Nozomi Naoi’s Yumeji Modern: Designing the Everyday in Twentieth-Century Japan (University of Washington Press, 2020) is the first book-length English-language study of one of Japan’s iconic twenti...
ListenDaniel P. Aldrich, “Black Wave: How Networks and Governance Shaped Japan’s 3/11 Disasters” (U Chicago Press, 2020) from 2020-08-05T09:00:16
Despite the devastation caused by the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and 60-foot tsunami that struck Japan in 2011, some 96% of those living and working in the most disaster-stricken region of Tōhoku mad...
ListenTakashi Miura, “Agents of World Renewal: The Rise of Yonaoshi Gods in Japan” (U Hawaii Press, 2019) from 2020-07-08T09:00:41
In this interview, we talk to Takashi Miura, assistant professor in the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Arizona, about his book Agents of World Renewal: The Rise of Yonaoshi Gods in...
ListenElisheva A. Perelman, “American Evangelists and Tuberculosis in Modern Japan” (Hong Kong UP, 2020) from 2020-06-12T09:00:21
Elisheva A. Perelman‘s new book American Evangelists and Tuberculosis in Modern Japan (Hong Kong University Press, 2020) examines the consequences of Japan’s decision not to tackle the tuberculosis...
ListenKatarzyna J. Cwiertka, “Branding Japan’s Food: From Meibutsu to Washoku” (U Hawaii Press, 2020) from 2020-05-29T09:00:11
Katarzyna J. Cwiertka and Yasuhara Miho’s Branding Japan’s Food: From Meibutsu to Washoku (University of Hawaii Press, 2020) explores historical and contemporary practices of place branding through...
ListenTatiana Linkhoeva, “Revolution Goes East: Imperial Japan and Soviet Communism” (Cornell UP, 2020) from 2020-05-14T09:00:24
A century ago it wasn’t a virus whose spread was eliciting reactions around the world, but an idea. As Russia’s 1917 October Revolution distended itself across north Asia and reverberated globally,...
ListenDavid Ambaras, “Japan’s Imperial Underworlds: Intimate Encounters at the Borders of Empire” (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2020-05-12T09:00:21
Through a series of provocative case studies on mobility, transgression, and intimacy, David Ambaras’s Japan’s Imperial Underworlds: Intimate Encounters at the Borders of Empire (Cambridge Universi...
ListenG. Clinton Godart, “Darwin, Dharma, and the Divine: Evolutionary Theory and Religion in Modern Japan” (U Hawaii Press, 2017) from 2020-03-30T09:00:48
In Darwin, Dharma, and the Divine. Evolutionary Theory and Religion in Modern Japan (University of Hawaii Press, 2017), G. Clinton Godart (Associate Professor at Tohoku University’s Department of G...
ListenOleg Benesch and Ran Zwigenberg, “Japan’s Castles: Citadels of Modernity in War and Peace” (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2019-10-31T09:00:29
Oleg Benesch and Ran Zwigenberg’s coauthored Japan’s Castles: Citadels of Modernity in War and Peace (Cambridge University Press, 2019) uses the fate of castles after the Meiji coup of 1868 as a ca...
ListenJolyon Baraka Thomas, “Faking Liberties: Religious Freedom in American-Occupied Japan” (U Chicago Press, 2019) from 2019-10-17T09:00:55
Jolyon Baraka Thomas’s Faking Liberties: Religious Freedom in American-Occupied Japan (University of Chicago Press, 2019) challenges the commonsensical notion that the Japanese empire granted its s...
ListenLevi McLaughlin, “Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution: The Rise of A Mimetic Nation in Modern Japan” (U Hawaii Press, 2018) from 2019-08-26T09:00:05
Being Japan’s largest and most influential new religious organization, Soka Gakkai (Society for the Creation of Value) and Soka Gakkai International (SGI) claims to have 12 million members in 192 c...
ListenMax Ward, “Thought Crime: Ideology and State Power in Interwar Japan” (Duke UP, 2019) from 2019-08-22T09:00:01
Max Ward’s Thought Crime: Ideology and State Power in Interwar Japan (Duke University Press, 2019) analyzes the trajectory and transformations of the implementation of Japan’s 1925 Peace Preservati...
ListenSabine Frühstück, “Playing War: Children and the Paradoxes of Modern Militarism in Japan” (U California Press, 2017) from 2019-08-14T09:00:16
In Playing War: Children and the Paradoxes of Modern Militarism in Japan (University of California Press, 2017), Sabine Frühstück shows how children and childhood have been used in twentieth centur...
ListenDanny Orbach, “Curse on This Country: The Rebellious Army of Imperial Japan” (Cornell UP, 2017) from 2019-07-18T09:00:40
Danny Orbach’s Curse on This Country: The Rebellious Army of Imperial Japan (Cornell University Press, 2017) provides new insights into the origins of the insubordination that plagued and character...
ListenJakobina Arch, “Bringing Whales Ashore: Oceans and the Environment of Early Modern Japan” (U Washington Press, 2018) from 2019-07-11T09:00:39
Bringing Whales Ashore: Oceans and the Environment of Early Modern Japan (University of Washington Press, 2018) is more than a history of whaling in Japan. Jakobina K. Arch weaves together a wealth...
ListenJennifer Dixon, “Dark Pasts: Changing the State’s Story in Turkey and Japan” (Cornell UP, 2018) from 2019-06-06T09:00:51
Jennifer Dixon’s Dark Pasts: Changing the State’s Story in Turkey and Japan (Cornell University Press, 2018), investigates the Japanese and Turkish states’ narratives of their “dark pasts,” the Nan...
ListenKerim Yasar, “Electrified Voices: How the Telephone, Phonograph, and Radio Shaped Modern Japan, 1868-1945” (Columbia UP, 2018) from 2019-05-28T09:00:26
Electrified Voices: How the Telephone, Phonograph, and Radio Shaped Modern Japan, 1868-1945 (Columbia UP, 2018) explores the soundscapes of modernity in Japan. In this book, Kerim Yasar argues that...
ListenMaren A. Ehlers, “Give and Take: Poverty and the Status Order in Early Modern Japan” (Harvard U Asia Center, 2018) from 2019-05-24T09:00:07
Maren A. Ehlers’s Give and Take: Poverty and the Status Order in Early Modern Japan (Harvard University Asia Center, 2018) examines the ways in which ordinary subjects—including many so-called outc...
ListenChristina Yi, “Colonizing Language: Cultural Production and Language Politics in Modern Japan and Korea” (Columbia UP, 2018) from 2019-05-02T11:00:03
The fact that Korea’s experience of Japanese imperialism plays a role in present-day Japan-Korea relations is no secret to anyone. Questions of guilt, responsibility and atonement continue to bubbl...
ListenLevi S. Gibbs, “Song King: Connecting People, Places and Past in Contemporary China” (U Hawaii Press, 2018) from 2019-04-02T11:00:13
How does music link people across time and space? How do singers modulate their repertoires to forge links with audiences both within and across local, regional and national borders? What are the c...
ListenSayaka Chatani, “Nation-Empire: Ideology and Rural Youth Mobilization in Japan and Its Colonies” (Cornell UP, 2018) from 2019-03-11T11:00:50
Sayaka Chatani’s Nation-Empire: Ideology and Rural Youth Mobilization in Japan and Its Colonies (Cornell University Press, 2018) tackles the fraught question of how and why young men in marginalize...
ListenEiko Maruko Siniawer, “Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan” (Cornell UP, 2018) from 2019-01-29T12:00:05
Eiko Maruko Siniawer’s Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan (Cornell University Press, 2018) is an absorbing look at the multiple and changing ways that waste—of resources, possessions, time, money, etc....
ListenYulia Frumer, “Making Time: Astronomical Time Measurement in Tokugawa Japan” (U Chicago Press, 2018) from 2018-10-17T10:00:32
Yulia Frumer’s new book follows roughly three hundred years of transformations in how time was conceptualized, measured, and materialized in Japan. Making Time: Astronomical Time Measurement in Tok...
ListenNick Kapur, “Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo” (Harvard UP, 2018) from 2018-09-21T10:00:51
Nick Kapur’s Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo (Harvard University Press, 2018) is an ambitious look at the transformations of Japanese society after the massive protests ...
ListenLaura Neitzel, “The Life We Longed for: Danchi Housing and the Middle Class Dream in Postwar Japan” (MerwinAsia, 2016) from 2018-08-30T10:00:24
Laura Neitzel’s The Life We Longed for: Danchi Housing and the Middle Class Dream in Postwar Japan (MerwinAsia, 2016) is a chronicle of the large, government-sponsored housing projects called danch...
ListenKate McDonald, “Placing Empire: Travel and the Social Imagination in Imperial Japan” (U California Press, 2017) from 2018-08-01T10:00:35
Kate McDonald‘s Placing Empire: Travel and the Social Imagination in Imperial Japan (University of California Press, 2017) is a thoughtful and provocative study of the spatial politics of Japanese ...
ListenAnna Andreeva, “Assembling Shinto: Buddhist Approaches to Kami Worship in Medieval Japan” (Harvard Asia Center, 2017) from 2018-02-07T11:00:15
In her recent monograph, Assembling Shinto: Buddhist Approaches to Kami Worship in Medieval Japan (Harvard University Asia Center, 2017), Anna Andreeva focuses on a complex network of religious sit...
ListenAndrew McKevitt, “Consuming Japan: Popular Culture and the Globalizing of 1980s America” (UNC Press, 2017) from 2018-01-08T11:00:42
In Consuming Japan: Popular Culture and the Globalizing of 1980s America (UNC Press, 2017), Andrew McKevitt explores the intense and ultimately fleeting moment in 1980s America when the future look...
ListenBryan D. Lowe, “Ritualized Writing: Buddhist Practice and Scriptural Cultures in Ancient Japan” (U of Hawaii Press, 2017) from 2017-12-04T12:56:01
In his recent monograph, Ritualized Writing: Buddhist Practice and Scriptural Cultures in Ancient Japan (University of Hawaii Press, 2017), Bryan D. Lowe examines eighth-century Japanese practices ...
ListenMarcia Yonemoto, “The Problem of Women in Early Modern Japan” (U of California Press, 2016) from 2017-04-25T11:58:51
Were women a problem in early modern Japan? If they were, what was the nature of the problem they posed? For whom, and why? Marcia Yonemoto‘s new book explores these questions in a compelling study...
ListenJessamyn R. Abel, “The International Minimum: Creativity and Contradiction in Japan’s Global Engagement, 1933-1964” (U. of Hawaii Press, 2015) from 2016-10-24T16:06:09
Jessamyn R. Abel’s new book carefully traces the rise and transformations of an internationalist worldview in modern Japan, from its withdrawal from the League of Nations and admission into the UN,...
ListenAkiko Takenaka, “Yasukuni Shrine: History, Memory, and Japan’s Unending Postwar” (U. of Hawaii Press, 2015) from 2016-08-24T18:25:11
Akiko Takenaka’s new book looks carefully at Yasukuni Shrine as a war memorial, examining its role in waging war, honoring the dead, promoting peace, and building a modern national identity. Yasuku...
ListenAnthony Rausch, “Japan’s Local Newspapers: Chihoshi and Revitalization Journalism” (Routledge, 2012) from 2016-05-13T14:55:25
Anthony Rausch‘s recent work looks closely at newspapers and journalism in modern Japan, focusing especially on the nature and significance of local newspapers. Though the local newspaper in Japan ...
ListenSeth Jacobowitz, “Writing Technology in Meiji Japan” (Harvard UP, 2015) from 2016-04-26T16:36:30
Seth Jacobowitzs new book opens with a balloon ride and closes with a record-scratching cat, and in between it offers a fascinating history of Meiji media focused on technologies of writing and scr...
ListenDouglas Clark, “Gunboat Justice: British and American Law Courts in China and Japan (1842-1943)” (Earnshaw Books, 2016) from 2016-04-11T22:11:25
Douglas Clark’s new Gunboat Justice: British and American Law Courts in China and Japan (1842-1943) (Earnshaw Books Limited, 2016) is a three-volume study of extraterritoriality and its transnation...
ListenChristopher Bondy, “Voice, Silence, and Self: Negotiations of Buraku Identity in Contemporary Japan” (Harvard Asia Center, 2015) from 2016-03-01T17:39:40
“You are a member of a minority group but do not know it. How is this possible?” Christopher Bondy’s new book explores this question in a study of the making of burakumin identity in the schools an...
ListenHeather Blair, “Real and Imagined: The Peak of Gold in Heian Japan” (Harvard U Asia Center, 2015) from 2016-01-20T12:17:25
In her recent monograph, Real and Imagined: The Peak of Gold in Heian Japan (Harvard University Asia Center, 2015), Heather Blair explores the religious and institutional history of Kinpusen, a mou...
ListenFederico Marcon, “The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan” (U of Chicago, 2015) from 2015-09-22T08:43:31
Federico Marcon‘s new book opens a fascinating window into the history of Japan’s relationship to its natural environment. The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan ...
ListenPaul A. Christensen, “Japan, Alcoholism, and Masculinity: Suffering Sobriety in Tokyo” (Lexington Books, 2014) from 2015-08-19T08:29:35
Paul A. Christensen‘s new book is a thoughtful ethnography of drinking, drunkenness, and male sociability in modern urban Japan. Focusing on two major alcohol sobriety support groups in Japan, Alco...
ListenParks M. Coble, “China’s War Reporters: The Legacy of Resistance against Japan” (Harvard UP, 2015) from 2015-08-10T15:23:26
Parks M. Coble‘s new book is a wonderful study of memory, war, and history that takes the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945 and its aftermath as its focus. China’s War Reporters: The Legacy of Resista...
ListenJohn K. Nelson, “Experimental Buddhism: Innovation and Activism in Contemporary Japan” (U of Hawaii Press, 2013) from 2015-05-07T04:00:18
In his recent book, Experimental Buddhism: Innovation and Activism in Contemporary Japan (University of Hawaii Press, 2013), John K. Nelson delves into the historical circumstances that have led to...
ListenEmily Anderson, “Christianity and Imperialism in Modern Japan: Empire for God” (Bloomsbury, 2014) from 2015-03-27T09:31:34
When one thinks of the connection of religion and imperialism in Japan, one automatically thinks first of Shintoism and second of Buddhism. Christianity does not usually figure into that story. How...
ListenCharlotte Eubanks, “Miracles of Book and Body: Buddhist Textual Culture and Medieval Japan (U of California Press, 2011) from 2015-02-06T15:10:39
In Miracles of Book and Body: Buddhist Textual Culture and Medieval Japan (University of California Press, 2011), Charlotte Eubanks examines the relationship between MahÄyÄna Buddhist sÅ«tras and...
ListenJoseph D. Hankins, “Working Skin: Making Leather, Making a Multicultural Japan” (U of California Press, 2014) from 2014-12-31T14:45:38
Joseph D. Hankins‘s marvelous new ethnography of the contemporary Buraku people looks at the labor involved in “identifying, dismantling, and reproducing” the Buraku situation in Japan and beyond. ...
ListenClark Chilson, “Secrecy’s Power: Covert Shin Buddhists in Japan and Contradictions of Concealment” (University of Hawaii Press, 2014) from 2014-11-11T14:04:08
Clark Chilson‘s new book, Secrecy’s Power: Covert Shin Buddhists in Japan and Contradictions of Concealment (University of Hawai’i Press, 2014) examines secret groups of Shin (i.e., True Pure Land ...
ListenRobert Stolz, “Bad Water: Nature, Pollution, and Politics in Japan, 1870-1950” (Duke UP, 2014) from 2014-10-02T11:46:06
Robert Stolz‘s new book explores the emergence of an environmental turn in modern Japan. Bad Water: Nature, Pollution; Politics in Japan, 1870-1950 (Duke University Press, 2014) guides readers thro...
ListenJolyon Thomas, “Drawing on Tradition: Manga, Anime, and Religion in Contemporary Japan” (University Of Hawai’i Press, 2012) from 2014-09-06T11:38:16
The worlds of cinema and illustrated fiction are replete with exciting data for the historian of religion. Drawing on Tradition: Manga, Anime, and Religion in Contemporary Japan (University Of Hawa...
ListenHideaki Fujiki, “Making Personas: Transnational Film Stardom in Modern Japan” (Harvard University Asia Center, 2013) from 2014-09-04T13:15:02
Stardom has a history. Hideaki Fujiki‘s new book traces that history through a story of the transformations of Japanese film stars in the early twentieth century. Taking a deeply transnational appr...
ListenGregory Smits, “Seismic Japan” (University of Hawaii Press, 2013) from 2014-08-16T15:57:33
In two recent books, Gregory Smits offers a history of earthquakes and seismology in Japan that creates a wonderful dialogue between history and the sciences. Seismic Japan: The Long History and Co...
ListenAnne Allison, “Precarious Japan” (Duke University Press, 2013) from 2014-05-23T11:55:03
“[All] I want to eat is a rice ball.” This was the last entry in the diary of a 52-year-old man who starved to death in an apartment he had occupied for 20 years. His is just one of many voices of ...
ListenMichael Wert, “Meiji Restoration Losers: Memory and Tokugawa Supporters in Modern Japan” (Harvard Asia Center, 2013) from 2014-04-18T10:38:45
Michael Wert‘s new book considers the construction of memory around the “losers” of the Meiji Restoration, individuals and groups whose reputations suffered most in the late nineteenth-century tran...
ListenMiriam Kingsberg, “Moral Nation: Modern Japan and Narcotics in Global History” (University of California Press, 2013) from 2014-04-08T08:53:19
Miriam Kingsberg‘s fascinating new book offers both a political and social history of modern Japan and a global history of narcotics in the modern world. Moral Nation: Modern Japan and Narcotics in...
ListenDavid Spafford, “A Sense of Place: The Political Landscape in Late Medieval Japan” (Harvard University Asia Center, 2013) from 2014-01-07T10:39:19
So many history books take for granted that a story about the past needs to focus on change (gradual or dramatic, transformative or subtle) as its motivating narrative and argumentative core. In A ...
ListenDarryl E. Flaherty, “Public Law, Private Practice: Politics, Profit, and the Legal Profession in Nineteenth-Century Japan” (Harvard Asia Center, 2013) from 2013-11-17T11:21:32
In global narratives of modern legal history, Asia tends to fall short relative to Europe and the US. According to these narratives, while individuals in the West enjoyed political participation an...
ListenAaron S. Moore, “Constructing East Asia: Technology, Ideology, and Empire in Japan’s Wartime Era, 1931-1945” (Stanford UP, 2013) from 2013-10-26T09:21:42
We tend to understand the modernization of Japan as a story of its rise as a techno-superpower. In East Asia: Technology, Ideology, and Empire in Japan’s Wartime Era, 1931-1945 (Stanford University...
ListenLouise Young, “Beyond the Metropolis: Second Cities and Modern Life in Interwar Japan” (University of California Press, 2013) from 2013-09-17T11:47:16
During the interwar period (1918-1937), the city began to take its modern shape in Japan. At the same time, development in the Japanese provinces became a capitalist frontier in a new phase of indu...
ListenFabian Drixler, “Mabiki: Infanticide and Population Growth in Eastern Japan, 1660-1950” (University of California Press, 2013) from 2013-09-05T13:54:48
The book opens on a scene in the mountains of Gumna, Japan. A midwife kneels next to a mother who has just given birth, and she proceeds to strangle the newborn. It’s an arresting way to begin an i...
ListenMark Byington, ed., “Early Korea: The Rediscovery of Kaya in History and Archaeology” (University of Hawaii Press, 2012) from 2013-07-01T10:03:26
Early Korea is a resource like no other: in an ongoing series of volumes produced by the Early Korea Project at the Korea Institute of Harvard University, the series provides surveys of Korean scho...
ListenMaki Fukuoka, “The Premise of Fidelity: Science, Visuality, and Representing the Real in 19th-Century Japan” (Stanford UP, 2012) from 2013-06-22T13:04:39
Zograscope. Say it with me: zograscope. ZooooOOOOOoooograscope. There are many optical wonders in Maki Fukuoka’s new book The Premise of Fidelity: Science, Visuality, and Representing the Real in 1...
ListenWilliam Marotti, “Money, Trains, and Guillotines: Art and Revolution in 1960s Japan” (Duke UP, 2013) from 2013-05-22T16:04:41
Japanese artist Akasegawa Genpei was prosecuted in the 1960s for producing work that imitated money. His single-sided, monochrome prints of the 1,000 yen note generated a wide-ranging set of debate...
ListenIan Condry, “The Soul of Anime” (Duke UP, 2013) from 2013-04-30T12:41:46
You may come for the Astro Boy or Afro Samurai, but you’ll stay for the innovative ways that Ian Condry‘s new book brings together analyses of transmedia practice, collaboration, and materialities ...
ListenJonathan E. Abel, “Redacted: The Archives of Censorship in Transwar Japan” (University of California Press, 2012) from 2013-04-01T13:29:58
There is much to love about Jonathan Abel‘s new book. Redacted: The Archives of Censorship in Transwar Japan (University of California Press, 2012) brilliantly takes readers into the performance of...
ListenGennifer Weisenfeld, “Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923” (University of California Press, 2012) from 2013-03-01T12:31:43
Gennifer Weisenfeld‘s gorgeous and thoughtful new book explores the visual culture that emerged in the wake of the Kanto earthquake of 1923. Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’...
ListenBarbara R. Ambros, “Bones of Contention: Animals and Religion in Contemporary Japan” (University of Hawai’i Press, 2012) from 2013-01-30T14:44:54
It opens with a parakeet named Homer, and it closes with a dog named Hachiko. In the intervening pages, Barbara Ambros explores the deaths, afterlives, and necrogeographies of pets in contemporary ...
ListenBarak Kushner, “Slurp!: A Social and Culinary History of Ramen – Japan’s Favorite Noodle Soup” (Global Oriental, 2012) from 2012-12-20T21:53:59
I bet you’ve never heard of the “Smash the Baltic Fleet Memorial Togo Marshmallow.” I hadn’t either, before reading Barak Kushner‘s lively and illuminating new book on the history of ramen in Japan...
ListenJason Josephson, “The Invention of Religion in Japan” (University of Chicago Press, 2012) from 2012-10-13T13:00:49
In 1853, the Japanese were required to consider what the word religion meant when western powers compelled the Tokugawa government to ensure freedom of religion to Christian missionaries. The chall...
ListenAmy Stanley, “Selling Women: Prostitution, Markets, and the Household in Early Modern Japan” (University of California Press, 2012) from 2012-09-19T16:46:44
With prose that is as elegant as the argument is clear, Amy Stanley‘s new book tells a social, cultural, and economic history of Tokugawa Japan through the prism of prostitution. Selling Women: Pro...
ListenPar Cassel, “Grounds of Judgment: Extraterritoriality and Imperial Power in Nineteenth-Century China and Japan” (Oxford UP, 2012) from 2012-09-13T11:46:51
Extraterritoriality was not grafted whole onto East Asian societies: it developed over time and in a relationship with local precedents, institutions, and understandings of power. Grounds of Judgme...
ListenMarnie Anderson, “A Place in Public: Women’s Rights in Meiji Japan” (Harvard University Asia Center, 2010) from 2012-08-24T13:06:44
In the late nineteenth century the Japanese elite embarked on an aggressive, ambitious program of modernization known in the West as the “Meiji Restoration.” In a remarkably short period of time, t...
ListenMiryam Sas, “Experimental Arts in Postwar Japan: Moments of Encounter, Engagement, and Imagined Return” (Harvard University Asia Center, 2011) from 2012-08-23T19:39:12
Miryam Sas’ Experimental Arts in Postwar Japan: Moments of Encounter, Engagement, and Imagined Return (Harvard University Asia Center, 2011) is an exceptionally rich study that has a great deal to ...
ListenEthan Segal, “Coins, Trade, and the State: Economic Growth in Early Medieval Japan” (Harvard University Asia Center, 2011) from 2012-07-02T12:02:49
What did money mean to the people of medieval Japan? In Coins, Trade, and the State: Economic Growth in Early Medieval Japan (Harvard University Asia Center, 2011), Ethan Segal takes readers throug...
ListenMerry White, “Coffee Life in Japan” (University of California Press, 2012) from 2012-06-15T15:13:18
Merry (Corky) White‘s new book Coffee Life in Japan (University of California Press, 2012) opens with a memory of stripping naked and being painted blue in an underground coffeehouse, and closes wi...
ListenLuke S. Roberts, “Performing the Great Peace: Political Space and Open Secrets in Tokugawa Japan” (University of Hawai’i Press, 2012) from 2012-06-01T13:43:36
Luke Roberts‘ Performing the Great Peace: Political Space and Open Secrets in Tokugawa Japan (University of Hawai’i Press, 2012) is a gracefully-written study of the performance of authority in Tok...
ListenRobert K. Fitts, “Banzai Babe Ruth: Baseball, Espionage, and Assassination during the 1934 Tour of Japan” (University of Nebraska Press, 2012) from 2012-04-23T10:30:44
There are three Americans in the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame. One is Horace Wilson, the professor of English who brought his students outside for a game in 1872, thus introducing baseball to Jap...
ListenDennis Frost, “Seeing Stars: Sports Celebrity, Identity, and Body Culture in Modern Japan” (Harvard UP, 2011) from 2012-01-24T19:17:52
In the celebrity firmament that circles around us, sports stars are among the brightest lights. Kobe, Tiger, Messi, Márta, Sachin, and Serena can be recognized from most points on the globe.But ot...
ListenEric Rath, “Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Japan” (University of California Press, 2010) from 2011-08-04T15:15:50
Cuisine in early modern Japan was experienced and negotiated through literature and ritual, and the uneaten or inedible was often as important as what was actually consumed. Eric Rath‘s recent book...
ListenLori Meeks, “Hokkeji and the Reemergence of Female Monastic Orders in Premodern Japan” (University of Hawaii Press, 2010) from 2011-06-20T12:35:15
Scholars have long been fascinated by the Kamakura era (1185-1333) of Japanese history, a period that saw the emergence of many distinctively Japanese forms of Buddhism. And while a lot of this att...
ListenMichael Auslin, “Pacific Cosmopolitans: A Cultural History of U.S.-Japan Relations” (Harvard UP, 2011) from 2011-05-05T13:45:30
How have the United States and Japan managed to remain such strong allies, despite having fought one another in a savage war less than 70 years ago? In Michael Auslin’s Pacific Cosmopolitans: A Cul...
ListenMichael Auslin, "Pacific Cosmopolitans: A Cultural History of U.S.-Japan Relations" (Harvard UP, 2011) from 2011-05-05T08:00
How have the United States and Japan managed to remain such strong allies, despite having fought one another in a savage war less than 70 years ago? In Michael Auslin's Pacific Cosmopolitans: A Cul...
ListenYuma Totani, “The Tokyo War Crimes Trials: The Pursuit of Justice in the Wake of World War II” (Harvard UP, 2008) from 2009-04-04T02:36:29
Most everyone has heard of the Nuremberg Trials. Popular books have been written about them. Hollywood made movies about them. Some of us can even name a few of the convicted (Hermann Goering, Albe...
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