Shows / New Books in Japanese Studies
New Books in Japanese Studies
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/…
Episodes
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Gian Piero Persiani, "Poets, Patrons, and the Public: Poetry as Cultural Phenomenon in Courtly Japan" (Brill, 2025)
Waka poetry was all the rage in tenth-century, courtly Japan. Every educated person composed it, emperors and consorts sponsored it, and societal interest in…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Mayu Fujikawa, "Envisioning Diplomacy: Japanese Ambassadors in Early Modern Europe" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2025)
In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Japan sent its first diplomatic delegations to visit the popes and dignitaries of Europe. European…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Machiya, Seikatsu Bunka, and Changing Domestic Culture in the Japanese Urban Environment
Kyoto is known as a pinnacle of Japanese history and culture, drawing visitors of more than double its resident population many times over every year. In this…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Andrew Bernstein, "Fuji: A Mountain In The Making" (Princeton UP, 2025)
The Great Wave is perhaps the most famous piece of Japanese artwork: a roaring blue wave and three boats on the ocean. And far in the background is Mt. Fuji…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Michal A. Piegzik, "Gamble in the Coral Sea: Japan's Offensive, the Carrier Battle, and the Road to Midway" (Naval Institute Press, 2025)
Driven by extensive Japanese primary sources, Gamble in the Coral Sea: Japan's Offensive, the Carrier Battle, and the Road to Midway (Naval Institute Press…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Shilla Lee , "Crafting Rural Japan: Traditional Potters and Rural Creativity in Regional Revitalization" (Routledge, 2024)
Centering collaborations and frictions around a Japanese town’s pottery industry, Crafting Rural Japan: Traditional Potters and Rural Creativity in Regional…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Pierre-Yves Donzé & Maki Umemura, "Pierre-Yves Donzé & Maki Umemura, Japan and the Great Divergence in Business History" (JESB, 2025)
For much of the late 20th century, Japanese business historians were core contributors to the global field. They published, collaborated, and shaped debates…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Fang Yu Hu, "Good Wife, Wise Mother: Educating Han Taiwanese Girls Under Japanese Rule" (U Washington Press, 2024)
In Good Wife, Wise Mother: Educating Han Taiwanese Girls Under Japanese Rule (U Washington Press, 2024), female education and citizenship serve as a lens…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Christopher Nelson, "When the Bones Speak: The Living, the Dead, and the Sacrifice of Contemporary Okinawa" (Duke UP, 2025)
Haunted by the past, ordinary Okinawans struggle to live with the unbearable legacies of war, Japanese nationalism, and American imperialism. They are caught…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Stephen C. Mercado, "Japanese Spy Gear and Special Weapons: How Noborito's Scientists and Technicians Served in the Second World War and the Cold War" (Pen & Sword Military, 2025)
War, and the threat of war, spurs governments to invest in secret military technologies and weapons. Imperial Japan, ahead of the Second World War, was no…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Joe Watkins, "Indigenizing Japan: Ainu Past, Present, and Future" (U Arizona Press, 2025)
In Indigenizing Japan: Ainu Past, Present, and Future (University of Arizona Press, 2025), archaeologist Joe E. Watkins provides a comprehensive look at the…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Stevie Suan, "Anime's Identity: Performativity and Form Beyond Japan" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)
A formal approach to anime rethinks globalization and transnationality under neoliberalism Anime has become synonymous with Japanese culture, but its global…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
M. G. Sheftall, "Nagasaki: The Last Witnesses" (Penguin Random House, 2025)
Nagasaki: The Last Witnesses (Penguin Random House, 2025) is the second volume in a prize-worthy two-book series based on years of irreplicable personal…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Aaron L. Miller, "Basketball in Japan: Shooting for the Stars" (Routledge, 2024)
Today we are joined by Aaron Miller, Lecturer in Kinesiology at California State University, East Bay and the author of Basketball in Japan: Shooting for the…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Maren A. Ehlers, "Give and Take: Poverty and the Status Order in Early Modern Japan" (Harvard U Asia Center, 2018)
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…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Victoria Young, "Translation and the Borders of Contemporary Japanese Literature: Inciting Difference" (Routledge, 2024)
Translation and the Borders of Contemporary Japanese Literature: Inciting Difference (Routledge, 2024) examines contemporary debates on such concepts as…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Paul Thomas Chamberlin, "Scorched Earth: A Global History of World War II" (Basic Books, 2025)
In popular memory, the Second World War was an unalloyed victory for freedom over totalitarianism, marking the demise of the age of empires and the triumph of…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Eiko Maruko Siniawer, "Ten Moments that Shaped Tokyo" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
How did Tokyo—Japan’s capital, global city, tourist hotspot and financial center—get to where it is today? Tokyo–or then, Edo–had a rather unglamorous start…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Frank Jacob, "Japanese War Crimes during World War II: Atrocity and the Psychology of Collective Violence" (Praeger, 2018)
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…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Sarah Teasley, "Designing Modern Japan" (Reaktion Books, 2022)
Sarah Teasley's Designing Modern Japan (Reaktion, 2022) unpicks the history of Japanese design from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Alison J. Miller, "Envisioning the Empress: The Lives and Images of Japanese Imperial Women, 1868-1952" (Routledge, 2024)
Envisioning the Empress illuminates dynamic and powerful empresses who impacted not only women in their own time but whose influence extended to later…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
James D.J. Brown, "Cracking the Crab: Russian Espionage Against Japan, from Peter the Great to Richard Sorge" (Hurst, 2025),
The Russians came late to Japan, arriving after the Portuguese and other European powers. But as soon as they arrived, Russia tried to use spies and espionage…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Sonia C. Gomez, "Picture Bride, War Bride: The Role of Marriage in Shaping Japanese America" (NYU Press, 2024)
Picture Bride, War Bride examines how the institution of marriage created pockets of legal and social inclusion for Japanese women during the period of…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Zev Handel, "Chinese Characters Across Asia: How the Chinese Script Came to Write Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese" (U Washington Press, 2025)
For centuries, scribes across East Asia used Chinese characters to write things down–even in languages based on very different foundations than Chinese. In…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
NIAS Podcast from the University of Tartu Asia Centre: Migration Policies and Realities in Estonia and Japan
This Nordic Asia Podcast episode explores how Estonia and Japan, two countries under demographic pressure with different immigration histories, are managing…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Sven Saaler, Kudō Akira, and Tajima Nobuo eds., "Mutual Perceptions and Images in Japanese-German Relations, 1860-2010" (Brill, 2017)
Mutual Perceptions and Images in Japanese-German Relations, 1860-2010 (Brill, 2017) examines the mutual images formed between Japan and Germany from the…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Lieba Faier, "The Banality of Good: The UN's Global Fight Against Human Trafficking" (Duke UP, 2024)
In The Banality of Good: The UN’s Global Fight against Human Trafficking (Duke University Press, 2024), Dr. Lieba Faier examines why contemporary efforts to…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
James D. Brown, "Cracking the Crab: Russian Espionage Against Japan, from Peter the Great to Richard Sorge" (Hurst, 2025)
Richard Sorge is one of history’s most famous spies. This hard-drinking, womanising, motorcycle-crashing Soviet officer penetrated the German embassy in Tokyo…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Jeremy A. Yellen, "Japan at War, 1914-1952" (Routledge, 2024)
Japan at War, 1914-1952 is a synthetic and interpretive history that highlights the centrality of war to the modern Japanese experience. The author argues that…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Jon L. Pitt, "Botanical Imagination: Rethinking Plants in Modern Japan" (Cornell UP, 2025)
Botanical Imagination: Rethinking Plants in Modern Japan (Cornell University Press, 2025) explores the complicated legacy and enduring lure of plant life in…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Gennifer Weisenfeld, "The Fine Art of Persuasion: Corporate Advertising Design, Nation, and Empire in Modern Japan" (Duke UP, 2025)
Commercial art is more than just mass-produced publicity; it constructs social and political ideologies that impact the public’s everyday life. In The Fine Art…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Michelle H. S. Ho, "Emergent Genders: Living Otherwise in Tokyo's Pink Economies" (Duke UP, 2025)
In Emergent Genders: Living Otherwise in Tokyo's Pink Economies (Duke UP, 2025), Michelle H. S. Ho traces the genders manifesting alongside Japanese popular…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Alison J. Miller and Eunyoung Park, "Transposed Memory: Visual Sites of National Recollection in 20th and 21st Century East Asia" (Brill, 2024)
Transposed Memory: Visual Sites of National Recollection in 20th and 21st Century East Asia (Brill, 2024) explores the visual culture of national recollection…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Zev J. Handel, "Chinese Characters Across Asia: How the Chinese Script Came to Write Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese" (U Washington Press, 2025)
While other ancient nonalphabetic scripts—Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Mayan hieroglyphs—are long extinct, Chinese characters, invented over…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Judith Vitale, "The Historical Writing of the Mongol Invasions in Japan" (Harvard UP, 2024)
Although Japan was never conquered by the Mongol empire, the 1274 and 1281 Mongol invasions were commemorated, remembered, and imagined in Japanese historical…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Nicholas Evan Sarantakes, "The Battle of Manila: Poisoned Victory in the Pacific War" (Oxford UP, 2025)
In our conversation about The Battle of Manila (Oxford University Press, 2025), Nicholas Evan Sarantakes explains how U.S. forces under General Douglas…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Brian Masaru Hayashi, "Asian American Spies: How Asian Americans Helped Win the Allied Victory" (Oxford UP, 2021)
Spies deep behind enemy lines; double agents; a Chinese American James Bond; black propaganda radio broadcasters; guerrilla fighters; pirates; smugglers…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Tadashi Ishikawa, "Geographies of Gender: Family and Law in Imperial Japan and Colonial Taiwan" (Cambridge UP., 2024)
In Geographies of Gender: Family and Law in Imperial Japan and Colonial Taiwan (Cambridge University Press, 2024) Dr. Tadashi Ishikawa traces perceptions and…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Eike Exner, "Comics and the Origins of Manga: A Revisionist History" (Rutgers UP, 2021)
Japanese comics, commonly known as manga, are a global sensation. Critics, scholars, and everyday readers have often viewed this artform through an Orientalist…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Akiko Takenaka, "Mothers Against War: Gender, Motherhood, and Peace Activism in Cold War Japan" (U Hawaii Press, 2025)
Mothers Against War: Gender, Motherhood, and Peace Activism in Cold War Japan (U Hawaii Press, 2025) examines the shifting relationships among motherhood…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Richard Overy, "Rain of Ruin: Tokyo, Hiroshima and the Surrender of Japan" (Norton, 2025)
September 2 will mark the 80th anniversary of Japan’s formal surrender to the United States aboard the USS. Missouri, ending the Second World War. The U.S…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Laura Miller, "Occult Hunting and Supernatural Play in Japan" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)
In Occult Hunting and Supernatural Play in Japan (Hawaii 2024), Laura Miller examines the intersections of ludic capitalism with formal and informal religious…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Xiaolu Ma, "Transpatial Modernity: Chinese Cultural Encounters with Russia Via Japan (1880-1930)" (Harvard UP, 2024)
Transpatial Modernity: Chinese Cultural Encounters with Russia Via Japan (1880-1930) (Harvard Asia Center, 2024) offers the first detailed account of the…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
David Dean Barrett, "140 Days to Hiroshima: The Story of Japan's Last Chance to Avert Armageddon" (Diversion Books, 2020)
During the closing months of World War II, two military giants locked in a death embrace of cultural differences and diplomatic intransigence. While developing…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Angus Lockyer, "Exhibitionist Japan: The Spectacle of Modern Development" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
From the second half of the nineteenth century, Japan has been a particularly enthusiastic user of exhibitions. Large-scale international exhibitions…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Ian Rapley, "Green Star Japan: Esperanto and the International Language Question, 1880–1945" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)
Ian Rapley’s Green Star Japan: Esperanto and the International Language Question, 1880-1945 (U Hawaii Press, 2024) is a sociopolitical history of the “planned”…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Joseph A. Seeley, "Border of Water and Ice: The Yalu River and Japan's Empire in Korea and Manchuria" (Cornell UP, 2024)
Icy, unpredictable, and treacherous, the dangers of the Yalu River were heightened in the twentieth century when it became the longest non-maritime border of…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Jaqueline Berndt, "The Cambridge Companion to Manga and Anime" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
In recent years, manga and anime have attracted increasing scholarly interest beyond the realm of Japanese studies. This Companion takes a unique approach…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Finlandization to ‘Finland Boom‘ in Japan: Finland’s Public Diplomacy in Japan
Finland, a minor player on the international arena and burdened with the tag of ‘Finlandization’ during much of the post-WWII period, has won surprisingly…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Arvid J. Lukauskas and Yumiko Shimabukuro, "Misery Beneath the Miracle in East Asia" (Cornell UP, 2024)
Misery beneath the Miracle in East Asia (Cornell University Press, 2024) challenges prevailing views of the East Asian economic miracle. Existing scholarship…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Andrew Campana, "Expanding Verse: Japanese Poetry at the Edge of Media" (U California Press, 2024)
Cinepoems, tape recorder poems, protest performance poems, music video poems, internet sign language poems, and augmented reality poems: these poems might…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Lionel Barber, "Gambling Man: The Wild Ride of Japan’s Masayoshi Son" (Atria, 2024)
As Wall Street swooned and boomed through the last decade, our livelihoods have—now more than ever—come to rely upon the good sense and risk appetites of a few…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Book Chat: The Life Story of Father Nguyễn, a Vietnamese Refugee Who Migrated to Taiwan, with Lin Shu-fen
In this podcast, the host, Lara Momesso, introduces a book she co-edited with Dr Polina Ivanova (University of Bremen) titled Refugees and Asylum Seekers in…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Catherine Butler, "British Children's Literature in Japanese Culture: Wonderlands and Looking-Glasses" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Whether watching Studio Ghibli adaptations of British children's books, visiting Harry Potter sites in Britain or eating at Alice in Wonderland-themed…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Katharine E. McGregor, "Systemic Silencing: Activism, Memory, and Sexual Violence in Indonesia" (U Wisconsin Press, 2023)
The system of prostitution imposed and enforced by the Japanese military during its wartime occupation of several countries in East and Southeast Asia is today…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Marc Gallicchio, "Unconditional: The Japanese Surrender in World War II" (Oxford UP, 2020)
Signed on September 2, 1945 aboard the American battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay by Japanese and Allied leaders, the instrument of surrender formally ended…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
James Welker, "Transfiguring Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan: Feminists, Lesbians, and Girls' Comics Artists and Fans" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)
Transfiguring Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan: Feminists, Lesbians, and Girls' Comics Artists and Fans (U Hawaii Press, 2024) examines three dynamic and…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Hannah Gould et al., "Death and Funeral Practices in Japan" (Routledge, 2024)
Death and Funeral Practices in Japan (Routledge, 2024) is an essential introductory text an often overlooked element of cultural expression. The books offers a…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Pascal Lottaz and Ingemar Ottosson, "Sweden, Japan, and the Long Second World War: 1931-1945" (Routledge, 2021)
Lottaz and Ottosson explore the intricate relationship between neutral Sweden and Imperial Japan during the latter's 15 years of warfare in Asia and in the…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Kerry Smith, "Predicting Disasters: Earthquakes, Scientists, and Uncertainty in Modern Japan" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)
Predicting Disasters: Earthquakes, Scientists, and Uncertainty in Modern Japan (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024) takes seriously attempts to reduce…