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
Helena Hof, "The EU Migrant Generation in Asia: Middle-Class Aspirations in Asian Global Cities" (Policy Press, 2022)
Drawing on an extensive study with young individuals who migrated to Singapore and Tokyo in the 2010s, The EU Migrant Generation in Asia: Middle-Class…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Kevin Blackburn, "The Comfort Women of Singapore in History and Memory" (National U of Singapore Press, 2022)
"Comfort women" or ianfu is the euphemism used by the Japanese military for the women they compelled to do sex work in the Second World War. The role of…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Ruth Rogaski, "Knowing Manchuria: Environments, the Senses, and Natural Knowledge on an Asian Borderland" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
Among all the world’s most storied and legend-filled regions, the place known to some over time as ‘Manchuria’ has had an especially wide range of ideas…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
A New Hope? Japanese Retirement Migration to Malaysia
In post-growth Japan, some people are looking to Southeast Asia, especially Malaysia, as a source of new hope. A notable change in the recent pattern of global…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Yu Tokunaga, "Transborder Los Angeles: An Unknown Transpacific History of Japanese-Mexican Relations" (U California Press, 2022)
Focusing on Los Angeles farmland during the years between the Immigration Act of 1924 and the Japanese Internment in 1942, Transborder Los Angeles: An Unknown…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Robert O'Mochain and Yuki Ueno, "Sexual Abuse and Education in Japan: In the (Inter)National Shadows" (Routledge, 2022)
Bringing together two voices, practice and theory, in a collaboration that emerges from lived experience and structured reflection upon that experience…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Daniel White, "Administering Affect: Pop-Culture Japan and the Politics of Anxiety" (Stanford UP, 2022)
In Administering Affect: Pop-Culture Japan and the Politics of Anxiety (Stanford UP, 2022), Daniel White draws on extensive fieldwork in government ministries…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Ronald H. Spector, "A Continent Erupts: Decolonization, Civil War, and Massacre in Postwar Asia, 1945-1955" (Norton, 2023)
On September 2, 1945, Japan surrendered to the United States, ending the Second World War. Yet the Japanese invasion had upended the old geopolitical…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Lucy Fraser, "The Pleasures of Metamorphosis: Japanese and English Fairy Tale Transformations of "The Little Mermaid"" (Wayne State UP, 2017)
“The Little Mermaid” has become popular around the world since the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen published it almost two centuries ago. Lucy Fraser’s…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Jonathan Dil, "Haruki Murakami and the Search for Self-Therapy: Stories from the Second Basement" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
Haruki Murakami, a global literary phenomenon, has said that he started writing fiction as a means of self-therapy. What he has not discussed as much is what…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Kathe Geist, "Ozu: A Closer Look" (Hong Kong UP, 2022)
Based on a close reading of Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu’s extant films, this book provides insights into the ways the director created narrative structures…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Dan Slater and Joseph Wong, "From Development to Democracy: The Transformations of Modern Asia" (Princeton UP, 2022)
Why some of Asia’s authoritarian regimes have democratized as they have grown richer—and why others haven’t Over the past century, Asia has been transformed by…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Annika A. Culver, "Japan's Empire of Birds: Aristocrats, Anglo-Americans, and Transwar Ornithology" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
Annika Culver’s Japan's Empire of Birds: Aristocrats, Anglo-Americans, and Transwar Ornithology (Bloomsbury Academic 2022) uses a previously unavailable…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Ayelet Zohar, "The Curious Case of the Camel in Modern Japan: (De)Colonialism, Orientalism, and Imagining Asia" (Brill, 2022)
Ayelet Zohar’s The Curious Case of the Camel in Modern Japan: (De)Colonialism, Orientalism, and Imagining Asia (Brill, 2022) traces the use of camels in the…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Adam Brookes, "Fragile Cargo: The World War II Race to Save the Treasures of China's Forbidden City" (Atria Books, 2022)
The two parallel Palace Museums in Beijing and Taiwan, and their separate collections of thousands of precious artworks and artifacts from imperial times…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Chris McMorran, "Ryokan: Mobilizing Hospitality in Rural Japan" (U Hawaii Press, 2022)
Today I talked to Chris McMorran about his new book Ryokan: Mobilizing Hospitality in Rural Japan (U Hawaii Press, 2022). Amid the decline of many of Japan’s…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Karli Shimizu, "Overseas Shinto Shrines: Religion, Secularity and the Japanese Empire" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
Through extensive use of primary resources and fieldwork, Karli Shimizu's book Overseas Shinto Shrines: Religion, Secularity and the Japanese Empire…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Viren Murthy, "The Politics of Time in China and Japan: Back to the Future" (Routledge, 2022)
Drawing on a wide range of texts and using an interdisciplinary approach, The Politics of Time in China and Japan: Back to the Future (Routledge, 2022) by…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Wei Yu Wayne Tan, "Blind in Early Modern Japan: Disability, Medicine, and Identity" (U Michigan Press, 2022)
While the loss of sight—whether in early modern Japan or now—may be understood as a disability, blind people in the Tokugawa period (1600–1868) could thrive…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
The Assassination and Legacy of Shinzo Abe
The brutal assassination of Prime Minister Abe in July this year shocked Japan and has produced large and unexpected consequences for the nation´s politics. In…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Paul D. Barclay, "Outcasts of Empire: Japan's Rule on Taiwan's 'Savage Border,' 1874-1945" (U California Press, 2018)
Outcasts of Empire: Japan’s Rule on Taiwan’s “Savage Border,” 1874-1945 (University of California Press, 2018) by Paul D. Barclay unveils the causes and…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Steve Kemper, "Our Man In Tokyo: An American Ambassador and the Countdown to Pearl Harbor" (Mariner Books, 2022)
A gripping, behind-the-scenes account of the personalities and contending forces in Tokyo during the volatile decade that led to World War II, as seen through…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Morgan Pitelka, "Reading Medieval Ruins: Urban Life and Destruction in Sixteenth-Century Japan" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
The Japanese provincial city of Ichijōdani was destroyed in the civil wars of the late sixteenth century but never rebuilt. Archaeological excavations have…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
A. Carly Buxton, "Un-Thinking Collaboration: American Nisei in Transwar Japan" (U Hawaii Press, 2022)
Today I will be talking to Carly Buxton about her book Unthinking collaboration: American Nisei in transwar Japan, which came out this year [2022] with the…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Yoshiko Okuyama, "Reframing Disability in Manga" (U Hawaii Press, 2020)
Reframing Disability in Manga (University of Hawaii Press, 2020) analyzes popular Japanese manga published from the 1990s to the present that portray the…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Jennifer S. Prough, "Kyoto Revisited: Heritage Tourism in Contemporary Japan" (U Hawaii Press, 2022)
Kyoto Revisited: Heritage Tourism in Contemporary Japan (U Hawaii Press, 2022) looks at the uses and effects of heritage in tourism in Kyoto today seen through…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Sabine Frühstück, "Gender and Sexuality in Modern Japan" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
Gender and Sexuality in Modern Japan (Cambridge University Press 2022) is a new addition to a list of publications by Sabine Fruhstuck, one of the leading…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Thomas Baudinette, "Regimes of Desire: Young Gay Men, Media, and Masculinity in Tokyo" (U Michigan Press, 2021)
Shinjuku Ni-chome is a nightlife district in central Tokyo filled with bars and clubs targeting the city's gay male community. Typically understood as a "safe…
New Books in Japanese StudiesOn John Hersey's "Hiroshima"
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…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
On Murasaki Shikibu's "The Tale of Genji"
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…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Virtual Reality as Immersive Enclosure, with Paul Roquet (EF, JP)
Paul Roquet is an MIT associate professor in media studies and Japan studies; his earlier work includes Ambient Media. It was his recent mind-bending The…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Johanna O. Zulueta, "Okinawan Women's Stories of Migration: From War Brides to Issei" (Routledge, 2022)
The phenomenon of “war brides” from Japan moving to the West has been quite widely discussed, but this book tells the stories of women whose lives followed a…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Murasaki Yamada, "Talk to My Back" (Drawn & Quarterly, 2022)
Manga historian Ryan Holmberg introduces the influential alternative manga artist Murasaki Yamada (1948-2009) to English readers through a scholarly…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
David Max Moerman, "The Japanese Buddhist World Map: Religious Vision and the Cartographic Imagination" (U Hawaii Press, 2021)
From the fourteenth through the nineteenth centuries Japanese monks created hundreds of maps to construct and locate their place in a Buddhist world…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Lasse Lehtonen, "Yuming's The 14th Moon" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
Today I will be talking to Lasse Lehtonen about his book The 14th Moon, which came out with Bloomsbury this year (2022). With me today is Dr. Brooke McCorkle…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Hannah Kirshner, "Water, Wood, and Wild Things: Learning Craft and Cultivation in a Japanese Mountain Town" (Penguin, 2022)
A young sake bar owner, Yusuke Shimoki, arrives on the doorstep of Hannah Kirshner’s Brooklyn apartment “with a suitcase full of Ishikawa sake,” in Hannah’s…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Caleb Swift Carter, "A Path Into the Mountains: Shugendō and Mount Togakushi" (U Hawaii Press, 2022)
Often represented as a tradition of ancient origins, Shugendō has retained a quality of mystery and nostalgia in the public imagination and scholars as the…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Morgan Pitelka and Reiko Tanimura, "Letters from Japan's Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries" (IEAS, 2021)
Cultural historians Morgan Pitelka and Reiko Tanimura partner with one of Japan’s premier experts in calligraphy and letter writing, Takashi Masuda, to…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Charo B. D'Etcheverry, "Celebrating Sorrow: Medieval Tributes to the Tale of Sagoromo" (Cornell UP, 2022)
Celebrating Sorrow: Medieval Tributes to the Tale of Sagoromo (Cornell UP, 2022) explores the medieval Japanese fascination with grief in tributes to The Tale…
New Books in Japanese StudiesOn Japanese Buddhist Art
Rachel Quist specializes in East Asian Buddhist imagery with focuses in pre-modern Japan and China. Her research centers on questions of interaction with…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Thomas Donald Conlan, "Samurai and the Warrior Culture of Japan, 471-1877: A Sourcebook" (Hackett, 2022)
In addition to providing excerpts from classic tales of Japan’s warrior past, Samurai and the Warrior Culture of Japan, 471-1877: A Sourcebook (Hackett, 2022)…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Michael Ackland, "The Existentialist Vision of Haruki Murakami" (Cambria Press, 2022)
Haruki Murakami has often been accused of being a feckless, merely popular writer, but in The Existentialist Vision of Haruki Murakami (Cambria Press, 2022)…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
James Welker, "Queer Transfigurations: Boys Love Media in Asia" (U Hawaii Press, 2022)
Queer Transfigurations: Boys Love Media in Asia (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2022), edited by James Welker, brings together twenty-one scholars exploring BL…
New Books in Japanese StudiesOn Inazō Nitobe's "Bushido: The Soul of Japan"
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…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Angela Ki Che Leung et al., "Moral Foods: The Construction of Nutrition and Health in Modern Asia" (U Hawaii Press, 2019)
The twelve chapters of Moral Foods: The Construction of Nutrition and Health in Modern Asia (U Hawai’i Press, 2020) are divided into three sections: Good…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Anoma Van Der Veere et al., "Public Health in Asia During the Covid-19 Pandemic" (Amsterdam UP, 2022)
Every nation in Asia has dealt with COVID-19 differently and with varying levels of success in the absence of clear and effective leadership from the WHO. As a…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Michael J. Hathaway, "What a Mushroom Lives For: Matsutake and the Worlds They Make" (Princeton UP, 2022)
What a Mushroom Lives For: Matsutake and the Worlds They Make (Princeton University Press, 2022) by Dr. Michael Hathaway pushes today’s mushroom renaissance in…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Christopher Craig, "Middlemen of Modernity: Local Elites and Agricultural Development in Meiji Japan" (U Hawaii Press, 2021)
Christopher Craig’s Middlemen of Modernity: Local Elites and Agricultural Development in Meiji Japan (U Hawaii Press, 2021) is a thoroughly research and…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Joshua A. Fogel and Matthew Fraleigh, "Sino-Japanese Reflections: Literary and Cultural Interactions between China and Japan in Early Modernity" (de Gruyter, 2022)
Joshua A. Fogel and Matthew Fraleigh's edited volume Sino-Japanese Reflections: Literary and Cultural Interactions between China and Japan in Early Modernity…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
The Future of Korea: A Discussion with Eugene Y. Park
There have been times when Korea has lived in periods of prolonged stability and tranquillity. But there have also been times, such as now, when it seems to…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Peter Kornicki, "Eavesdropping on the Emperor: Interrogators and Codebreakers in Britain's War With Japan" (Oxford UP, 2021)
When Japanese signals were decoded at Bletchley Park, who translated them into English? When Japanese soldiers were taken as prisoners of war, who interrogated…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Japanese Immigration and the Korean Minority
Why does Japanese immigration policy have such a bad name? What are the historical origins of tight immigration policies? Where have these policies left…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Ethan Mark, "Japan’s Occupation of Java in the Second World War: A Transnational History" (Bloomsbury, 2018)
Japan's Occupation of Java in the Second World War: A Transnational History (Bloomsbury, 2018) by Ethan Mark draws upon written and oral Japanese, Indonesian…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Jeannie N. Shinozuka, "Biotic Borders: Transpacific Plant and Insect Migration and the Rise of Anti-Asian Racism in America, 1890-1950" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
In the late nineteenth century, increasing traffic of transpacific plants, insects, and peoples raised fears of a "biological yellow peril" when nursery stock…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Sheila A. Smith, "Japan Rearmed: The Politics of Military Power" (Harvard UP, 2019)
Today I talked to Sheila A. Smith about her book Japan Rearmed: The Politics of Military Power (Harvard UP, 2019). Modern Japan is not only responding to…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
W. Puck Brecher, "Animal Care in Japanese Tradition: A Short History" (Association for Asian Studies, 2022)
In Animal Care in Japanese Tradition: A Short History (Association for Asian Studies, 2022), Brecher offers a brief overview of animals in Japanese culture and…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Victor Seow, "Carbon Technocracy: Energy Regimes in Modern East Asia" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
Victor Seow’s Carbon Technocracy: Energy regimes in Modern East Asia (U Chicago Press, 2021) is an account of the modern “world that carbon made” through the…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Rachael Hutchinson and Jérémie Pelletier-Gagnon, "Japanese Role-Playing Games: Genre, Representation, and Liminality in the JRPG" (Lexington Books, 2022)
Rachael Hutchinson and Jérémie Pelletier-Gagnon's edited volume Japanese Role-Playing Games: Genre, Representation, and Liminality in the JRPG (Lexington…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Japan’s Reaction to Russia’s War in Ukraine
Russia’s aggression in Ukraine has dramatically affected international politics, and the effects are also felt in East Asia. We have heard a lot about China’s…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Tehmton S. Mistry, "The 24th Mile: An Indian Doctor's Heroism in War-torn Burma" (HarperCollins, 2021)
The story of India and Indians in World War II has been overshadowed by other historical events of the 1940s, a busy decade that included such historical…