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
Timon Screech, "The Shogun's Silver Telescope: God, Art, and Money in the English Quest for Japan, 1600-1625" (Oxford UP, 2020)
An English mission to Japan arrives in 1613 with all the standard English commodities, including wool and cloth: which the English hope to trade for Japanese…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Orion Klautau and Hans Martin Krämer, "Buddhism and Modernity: Sources from Nineteenth-Century Japan" (U Hawaii Press, 2021)
Buddhism and Modernity: Sources from Nineteenth-Century Japan (University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2021) is a welcome new collection of twenty sources on modern…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Susanne Klien, "Urban Migrants in Rural Japan: Between Agency and Anomie in a Post-growth Society" (SUNY Press, 2020)
Susanne Klien's book Urban Migrants in Rural Japan: Between Agency and Anomie in a Post-growth Society (SUNY Press, 2020) provides a fresh perspective on…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Gideon Fujiwara, "From Country to Nation: Ethnographic Studies, Kokugaku, and Spirits in Nineteenth-Century Japan" (Cornell UP, 2021)
From Country to Nation: Ethnographic Studies, Kokugaku, and Spirits in Nineteenth-Century Japan (Cornell UP, 2021) tracks the emergence of the modern Japanese…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Joshua S. Mostow and Tokurō Yamamoto, "An Ise monogatari Reader: Contexts and Receptions" (Brill, 2021)
An An Ise monogatari Reader: Contexts and Receptions (Brill, 2021) is the first collection of essays in English on The Ise Stories, a canonical literary text…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Erica Baffelli et al., "The Bloomsbury Handbook of Japanese Religions" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
The Bloomsbury Handbook of Japanese Religions is edited by Erica Baffelli, Fabio Rambelli, and Andrea Castiglioni published by Bloomsbury, 2021. The Bloomsbury…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Kimiko Tanaka and Nan E. Johnson, "Successful Aging in a Rural Community in Japan" (Carolina Academic Press, 2021)
Kimiko Tanaka and Nan E. Johnson's Successful Aging in a Rural Community in Japan (Carolina Academic Press, 2021) discusses population aging in rural Japan and…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Kyokutei Bakin, "Eight Dogs, or 'Hakkenden': Part One—An Ill-Considered Jest" (Cornell UP, 2021)
Kyokutei Bakin's Nansō Satomi hakkenden is one of the monuments of Japanese literature. This multigenerational samurai saga was one of the most popular and…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
M.W. Shores, "The Comic Storytelling of Western Japan: Satire and Social Mobility in Kamigata Rakugo" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
Rakugo, a popular form of comic storytelling, has played a major role in Japanese culture and society. Developed during the Edo (1600–1868) and Meiji…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Outgoing Prime Minister Suga and Japan's Liberal Democratic Party
On September 3, 2021, Japanese Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide announced that he would not seek reelection as the president of the ruling Liberal Democratic…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Liang Luo, "The Global White Snake" (U Michigan Press, 2021)
Liang Luo's book The Global White Snake (U Michigan Press, 2021) examines the Chinese White Snake legends and their extensive, multidirectional travels within…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Hoyt Long, "The Values in Numbers: Reading Japanese Literature in a Global Information Age" (Columbia UP, 2021)
In The Values in Numbers: Reading Japanese Literature in a Global Information Age (Columbia UP, 2021), Hoyt Long offers both a reinterpretation of modern…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Su Yun Kim, "Imperial Romance: Fictions of Colonial Intimacy in Korea, 1905-1945" (Cornell UP, 2020)
As in colonial situations elsewhere, Korean experiences of Japanese empire featured many attempts by the imperial authorities to regulate intimate aspects of…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Jan Bardsley, "Maiko Masquerade: Crafting Geisha Girlhood in Japan" (U California Press, 2021)
Maiko Masquerade: Crafting Geisha Girlhood in Japan (University of California Press, 2021) explores Japanese representations of the maiko, or apprentice…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Anthony S. Rausch, "Resolving the Contemporary Tensions of Regional Places: What Japan Can Teach Us" (2021)
Resolving the Contemporary Tensions of Regional Places: What Japan Can Teach Us offers a fresh and unique view of regional society, regional economies and the…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Tom Phuong Le, "Japan's Aging Peace: Pacifism and Militarism in the Twenty-First Century" (Columbia UP, 2021)
Since the end of World War II, Japan has not sought to remilitarize, and its postwar constitution commits to renouncing aggressive warfare. Yet many inside and…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Hanno Jentzsch, "Harvesting State Support: Institutional Change and Local Agency in Japanese Agriculture" (U Toronto Press, 2021)
Agriculture has been among the toughest political battlegrounds in postwar Japan and represents an ideal case study in institutional stability and change…
- 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
Hoyt Long, "The Values in Numbers: Reading Japanese Literature in a Global Information Age" (Columbia UP, 2021)
Ideas about how to study and understand cultural history—particularly literature—are rapidly changing as new digital archives and tools for searching them…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Brooke McCorkle Okazaki, "Shonen Knife’s Happy Hour" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
Brooke McCorkle Okazaki’s Shonen Knife’s Happy Hour, part of the 33 1/3 music history and culture series, is a joyful romp through the career of the…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Eric C. Rath, "Oishii: The History of Sushi" (Reaktion Books, 2021)
Sushi and sashimi are by now a global sensation and have become perhaps the best known of Japanese foods—but they are also the most widely misunderstood…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Cees Heere, "Empire Ascendant: The British World, Race, and the Rise of Japan, 1894-1914" (Oxford UP, 2020)
In 1902, the British government concluded a defensive alliance with Japan, a state that had surprised much of the world with its sudden rise to prominence. For…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Allison Alexy, "Intimate Disconnections: Divorce and the Romance of Independence in Contemporary Japan" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
In many ways, divorce is a quintessentially personal decision—the choice to leave a marriage that causes harm or feels unfulfilling to the two people involved…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Susan Blakeley Klein, "Dancing the Dharma: Religious and Political Allegory in Japanese Noh Theater" (Harvard UP, 2020)
Dancing the Dharma: Religious and Political Allegory in Japanese Noh Theater (Harvard UP, 2020) examines the theory and practice of allegory by exploring a…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Elizabeth Emery, "Reframing Japonisme: Women and the Asian Art Market in Nineteenth-Century France, 1853-1914" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
Erin Duncan O’Neill (Assistant Professor, University of Oklahoma) speaks with Elizabeth Emery (Professor, Montclair State University) about Emery’s recent…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Matthew Carl Strecher, "The Forbidden Worlds of Haruki Murakami" (U Minnesota Press, 2014)
In an “other world” composed of language—it could be a fathomless Martian well, a labyrinthine hotel, or forest—a narrative unfolds, and with it the…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Sven Saaler, "Men in Metal: A Topography of Public Bronze Statuary in Modern Japan" (Brill, 2020)
In his pioneering study, Men in Metal: A Topography of Public Bronze Statuary in Modern Japan (Brill, 2020), Sven Saaler examines Japanese public statuary as a…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Women Singer-Songwriters of 1970s Japan: A Discussion with Satoko Naito
Lasse Lehtonen speaks to Satoko Naito about his research on Japanese women singer-songwriters of the 1970s and 1980s. Focusing on popular pioneers like Yumi…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
William P. Brecher, "Japan's Private Spheres: Autonomy in Japanese History, 1600-1930" (Brill, 2021)
Japan's Private Spheres: Autonomy in Japanese History, 1600-1930 (Brill, 2021) traces the shifting nature of autonomy in early modern and modern Japan. In this…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
John Person, "Arbiters of Patriotism: Right-Wing Scholars in Imperial Japan" (U Hawaii Press, 2020)
John Person’s Arbiters of Patriotism: Right-Wing Scholars in Imperial Japan (University of Hawaii Press, 2020) narrates the struggle for ownership of the moral…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Loren Stephens, "All Sorrows Can Be Borne" (Rare Bird Books, 2021)
In All Sorrows Can Be Borne (Rare Bird Books, 2021), Loren Stephens tells the story, inspired by true events, of a Japanese woman who survives the bombing of…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
B. Gramlich-Oka and A. Walthall, "Women and Networks in Nineteenth-Century Japan" (U Michigan Press, 2020)
Although scholars have emphasized the importance of women’s networks for civil society in twentieth-century Japan, Women and Networks in Nineteenth-Century…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Jeanne Shea et al., "Beyond Filial Piety: Rethinking Aging and Caregiving in Contemporary East Asian Societies" (Berghahn, 2020)
Known for a tradition of Confucian filial piety, East Asian societies have some of the oldest and most rapidly aging populations on earth. Today these…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
A. Castiglioni and F. Rambelli, "Defining Shugendo: Critical Studies on Japanese Mountain Religion" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
Andrea Castiglioni and Fabio Rambelli's edited volume Defining Shugendo: Critical Studies on Japanese Mountain Religion (Bloomsbury, 2020) presents the newest…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Kenneth J. Ruoff, "Japan's Imperial House in the Postwar Era, 1945-2019" (Harvard UP, 2021)
Ken Ruoff’s Japan’s Imperial House in the Postwar Era, 1945-2019 (Harvard UP, 2020), is a revised and expanded version of the author’s The People’s Emperor…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Robert T. Tierney, "Tropics of Savagery: The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame" (U California Press, 2010)
Tropics of Savagery: The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame (U California Press, 2010) is an incisive and provocative study of the figures and…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Miriam L. Kingsberg Kadia, "Into the Field: Human Scientists of Transwar Japan" (Stanford UP, 2019)
How did Japanese academics study their "fields" in places like Manchuria and Inner Mongolia in the transwar decades? How did they transform in the postwar…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Jürgen P. Melzer, "Wings for the Rising Sun: A Transnational History of Japanese Aviation" (Harvard UP, 2020)
Jürgen Melzer’s Wings for the Rising Sun: A Transnational History of Japanese Aviation (Harvard UP, 2020) traces the history of Japanese aviation from its…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Takeshi Watanabe, "Flowering Tales: Women Exorcising History in Heian Japan" (Harvard UP, 2020)
Telling stories: that sounds innocuous enough. But for the first chronicle in the Japanese vernacular, A Tale of Flowering Fortunes (Eiga monogatari), there…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Yuichiro Onishi and Fumiko Sakashita, "Transpacific Correspondence: Dispatches from Japan's Black Studies" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019)
Transpacific Correspondences: Dispatches from Japan’s Black Studies, an essay collection edited by Dr. Yuichiro Onishi and Dr Fumiko Sakashita, introduces a…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Timon Screech, "Tokyo Before Tokyo: Power and Magic in the Shogun’s City of Edo" (Reaktion Books, 2020)
In 1800, the Shogun’s chief minister wrote the following about the city of Edo: "Someone said that if Edo did not have frequent fires, then people would be…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Constantine Nomikos Vaporis, "Voices of Early Modern Japan" (Routledge, 2020)
In this newly revised and updated 2nd edition of Voices of Early Modern Japan: Contemporary Accounts of Daily Life During the Age of the Shoguns (Routledge…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Christopher Joby, "The Dutch Language in Japan (1600-1900): A Cultural and Sociolinguistic Study of Dutch as a Contact Language in Tokugawa and Meiji Japan" (Brill, 2020)
In The Dutch Language in Japan (1600-1900): A Cultural and Sociolinguistic Study of Dutch as a Contact Language in Tokugawa and Meiji Japan (Brill, 2020)…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Dennis J. Frost, "More Than Medals: A History of the Paralympics and Disability Sports in Postwar Japan" (Cornell UP, 2021)
Dennis Frost’s More than Medals: A History of the Paralympics and Disability Sports in Postwar Japan is a history of disability sports in modern Japan. The…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Laura Moretti, "Pleasure in Profit: Popular Prose in Seventeenth-Century Japan" (Columbia UP, 2020)
In the seventeenth century, Japanese popular prose flourished as waves of newly literate readers gained access to the printed word. Commercial publishers…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Sarah Kovner, "Prisoners of the Empire: Inside Japanese POW Camps" (Harvard UP, 2020)
Sarah Kovner’s Prisoners of the Empire: Inside Japanese POW Camps (Harvard UP, 2020) is a nuanced look at the experiences, narratives―and the…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Daniel Poch, "Licentious Fictions: Ninjō and the Nineteenth-Century Japanese Novel" (Columbia UP, 2019)
Nineteenth-century Japanese literary discourse and narrative developed a striking preoccupation with ninjō—literally “human emotion,” but often used in…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
James Hadley and Nell Regan, "A Gap in the Clouds: A New Translation of Ogura Hyakunin Isshu" (Dedalus Press, 2020)
Compiled around 1235, the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, or Ogura's 100 Poems by 100 Poets, is one of the most important collections of poetry in Japan. Though the…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Neriko Musha Doerr, "The Global Education Effect and Japan: Constructing New Borders and Identification Practices" (Routledge, 2020)
The Global Education Effect and Japan: Constructing New Borders and Identification Practices (Routledge, 2020) volume investigates the "global education…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Olga V. Solovieva and Sho Konishi, "Japan's Russia: Challenging the East-West Paradigm" (Cambria, 2021)
The Russian cultural presence in Japan after the Meiji Revolution was immense. Indeed, Japanese cultural negotiations with Russian intellectuals and Russian…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Hans Martin Krämer, "Shimaji Mokurai and the Reconception of Religion and the Secular in Modern Japan" (U of Hawaii Press, 2016)
Religion is at the heart of such ongoing political debates in Japan as the constitutionality of official government visits to Yasukuni Shrine, yet the very…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Erin L. Brightwell, "Reflecting the Past: Place, Language, and Principle in Japan's Medieval Mirror Genre" (Harvard UP, 2020)
Reflecting the Past: Place, Language, and Principle in Japan's Medieval Mirror Genre (Harvard UP, 2020) is the first English-language study to address the role…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Johanna O. Zulueta, "Transnational Identities on Okinawa’s Military Bases: Invisible Armies" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019)
In Transnational Identities on Okinawa’s Military Bases: Invisible Armies (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019), Johanna Zulueta considers the role of civilian workers on…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Nadine Willems, "Ishikawa Sanshiro's Geographical Imagination" (Leiden UP, 2020)
Ishikawa Sanshirō (1876-1956) was a journalist, intellectual, and self-proclaimed socialist active in early twentieth-century Japan. In Ishikawa Sanshirō’s…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Winifred Bird, "Eating Wild Japan: Tracking the Culture of Foraged Foods, with a Guide to Plants and Recipes" (Stone Bridge Press, 2021)
Winifred Bird’s Eating Wild Japan: Tracking the Culture of Foraged Foods, with a Guide to Plants and Recipes (Stone Bridge Press, 2021) is more than just a…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Fabio Rambelli, "The Sea and the Sacred in Japan: Aspects of Maritime Religion" (Bloomsbury, 2018)
In The Sea and the Sacred in Japan: Aspects of Maritime Religion (Bloomsbury 2018), Fabio Rambelli invites various fifteen scholars of Japanese religions to…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
A Roundtable on the History of the Japanese Student Movement: A Discussion with Naoko Koda and Chelsea Szendi Schieder
Chelsea Szendi Schieder’s Co-Ed Revolution: The Female Student in the Japanese New Left and Naoko Koda’s The United States and the Japanese Student Movement…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
G. Girard and T. Lockley, "African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan" (Hanover Square Press, 2021)
The remarkable life of history's first foreign-born samurai and his astonishing journey from Northern Africa to the heights of Japanese society. When Yasuke…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Rana Mitter, "Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937–1945" (HMH, 2013)
If we wish to understand the role of China in today’s global society, we would do well to remind ourselves of the tragic, titanic struggle which that country…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Eika Tai, "Comfort Women Activism: Critical Voices from the Perpetrator State" (Hong Kong UP, 2020)
Eika Tai’s Comfort Women Activism: Critical Voices from the Perpetrator State (Hong Kong University Press, 2020) tackles the complex histories of Japanese…