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
Torsten Weber, "Embracing 'Asia' in China and Japan: Asianism Discourse and the Contest for Hegemony, 1912-1933" (Springer, 2018)
Embracing ‘Asia’ in China and Japan: Asianism Discourse and the Contest for Hegemony (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) by Torsten Weber examines how Asianism became a…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Michael R. Auslin, "Asia's New Geopolitics: Essays on Reshaping the Indo-Pacific" (Hoover Institution Press, 2020)
Is the Indo-Pacific already the most dominant in terms of global power, politics, and wealth? In his newest book, Michael R. Auslin considers the key issues…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Linda C. Ehrlich, "The Films of Kore-eda Hirokazu: An Elemental Cinema" (Palgrave, 2019)
The Films of Kore-eda Hirokazu: An Elemental Cinema (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019) draws readers into the first 13 feature films and 5 of the documentaries of…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Wesley C. Robertson, "Scripting Japan: Orthography, Variation, and the Creation of Meaning in Written Japanese" (Routledge, 2020)
Imagine this book was written in Comic Sans. Would this choice impact your image of me as an author, despite causing no literal change to the content within?…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Bill Sewell, "Constructing Empire: The Japanese in Changchun, 1905-45" (UBC Press, 2019)
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…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Matjaz Ursic and Heide Imai, "Creativity in Tokyo: Revitalizing a Mature City" (Palgrave, 2020)
In Creativity in Tokyo: Revitalizing a Mature City (Palgrave, 2020), Heide Imai and Matjaz Ursic focues on overlooked contextual factors that constitute the…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Woojeong Joo, "Cinema of Ozu Yasujiro: Histories of the Everyday" (Edinburgh UP, 2017)
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…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Michael Fisch, "An Anthropology of the Machine: Tokyo's Commuter Train Network" (U of Chicago Press, 2018)
With its infamously packed cars and disciplined commuters, Tokyo’s commuter train network is one of the most complex technical infrastructures on Earth. In An…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Gracia Liu-Farrer, "Immigrant Japan: Mobility and Belonging in an Ethno-nationalist Society" (Cornell UP, 2020)
Immigrant Japan? Sounds like a contradiction, but as Gracia Liu-Farrer shows in Immigrant Japan Mobility and Belonging in an Ethno-nationalist Society (Cornell…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
William C. Hedberg, "The Japanese Discovery of Chinese Fiction: The Water Margin and the Making of a National Canon" (Columbia UP, 2019)
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…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
William W. Kelly, "The Sportsworld of the Hanshin Tigers: Professional Baseball in Modern Japan" (University of California Press, 2018)
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…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Kelly A. Hammond, "China's Muslims and Japan's Empire: Centering Islam in World War II" (UNC Press, 2020)
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…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
David Fedman, "Seeds of Control: Seeds of Control: Japan’s Empire of Forestry in Colonial Korea" (U Washington Press, 2020)
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…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Noel John Pinnington, "A New History of Medieval Japanese Theatre: Noh and Kyōgen from 1300 to 1600" (Springer, 2019)
Noel Pinnington's A New History of Medieval Japanese Theatre: Noh and Kyōgen from 1300 to 1600 (Palgrave, 2019) traces the history of noh and kyōgen, the first…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Elizabeth Son, "Embodied Reckonings: 'Comfort Women,' Performance, and Transpacific Redress" (U Michigan Press, 2018)
In a bustling city-center of Seoul, women in yellow vests protesting over the “final” resettlement between the Japanese and Korean governments every Wednesday…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Charlotte Eubanks, "The Art of Persistence: Akamatsu Toshiko and the Visual Cultures of Transwar Japan" (U Hawaii Press, 2019)
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…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Amy Stanley, "Stranger in the Shogun's City: A Japanese Woman and Her World" (Scribner, 2020)
“To mother, from Tsuneno (confidential). I’m writing with spring greetings. I went to Kanda Minagawa-chō in Edo—quite unexpectedly—and I ended up in so much…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Tobias Harris, "The Iconoclast: Shinzo Abe and the New Japan" (Hurst, 2020)
Abe Shinzō 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…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Sujung Kim, "Shinra Myojin and Buddhist Networks of the East Asian 'Mediterranean'" (U Hawaii Press, 2020)
Shinra Myojin and Buddhist Networks of the East Asian “Mediterranean” (University of Hawaii Press, 2020) is a fascinating study of the transcultural…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Suma Ikeuchi, "Jesus Loves Japan: Return Migration and Global Pentecostalism in a Brazilian Diaspora" (Stanford UP, 2019)
In 1990, the Japanese government introduced the Nikkei-jin (Japanese descendant) visa and since then it has attracted more than 190,000 Nikkei Brazilian…
- 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
Fabio Rambelli, “Spirits and Animism in Contemporary Japan” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019)
In Japan, a country popularly perceived as highly secularized and technologically advanced, ontological assumptions about spirits (tama or tamashii) seem to be…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Ann-elise Lewallen, “The Fabric of Indigeneity: Ainu Identity, Gender, and Settler Colonialism in Japan” (U New Mexico Press, 2016)
The Fabric of Indigeneity: Ainu Identity, Gender, and Settler Colonialism in Japan (University of New Mexico Press) is a recent addition to the growing…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Adam Broinowski, “Cultural Responses to Occupation in Japan: The Performing Body During and After the Cold War” (Bloomsbury 2016)
In Cultural Responses to Occupation in Japan: The Performing Body During and After the Cold War (Bloomsbury 2016), Adam Broinowski analyzes the emergence of…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Nozomi Naoi, “Yumeji Modern: Designing the Everyday in Twentieth-Century Japan” (U Washington Press, 2020)
Nozomi Naoi’s Yumeji Modern: Designing the Everyday in Twentieth-Century Japan (University of Washington Press, 2020) is the first book-length English-language…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Daniel P. Aldrich, “Black Wave: How Networks and Governance Shaped Japan’s 3/11 Disasters” (U Chicago Press, 2020)
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…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Takashi Miura, “Agents of World Renewal: The Rise of Yonaoshi Gods in Japan” (U Hawaii Press, 2019)
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…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Elisheva A. Perelman, “American Evangelists and Tuberculosis in Modern Japan” (Hong Kong UP, 2020)
Elisheva A. Perelman‘s new book American Evangelists and Tuberculosis in Modern Japan (Hong Kong University Press, 2020) examines the consequences of Japan’s…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Katarzyna J. Cwiertka, “Branding Japan’s Food: From Meibutsu to Washoku” (U Hawaii Press, 2020)
Katarzyna J. Cwiertka and Yasuhara Miho’s Branding Japan’s Food: From Meibutsu to Washoku (University of Hawaii Press, 2020) explores historical and…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Tatiana Linkhoeva, “Revolution Goes East: Imperial Japan and Soviet Communism” (Cornell UP, 2020)
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…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
David Ambaras, “Japan’s Imperial Underworlds: Intimate Encounters at the Borders of Empire” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
Through a series of provocative case studies on mobility, transgression, and intimacy, David Ambaras’s Japan’s Imperial Underworlds: Intimate Encounters at the…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
G. Clinton Godart, “Darwin, Dharma, and the Divine: Evolutionary Theory and Religion in Modern Japan” (U Hawaii Press, 2017)
In Darwin, Dharma, and the Divine. Evolutionary Theory and Religion in Modern Japan (University of Hawaii Press, 2017), G. Clinton Godart (Associate Professor…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Oleg Benesch and Ran Zwigenberg, “Japan’s Castles: Citadels of Modernity in War and Peace” (Cambridge UP, 2019)
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…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Jolyon Baraka Thomas, “Faking Liberties: Religious Freedom in American-Occupied Japan” (U Chicago Press, 2019)
Jolyon Baraka Thomas’s Faking Liberties: Religious Freedom in American-Occupied Japan (University of Chicago Press, 2019) challenges the commonsensical notion…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Levi McLaughlin, “Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution: The Rise of A Mimetic Nation in Modern Japan” (U Hawaii Press, 2018)
Being Japan’s largest and most influential new religious organization, Soka Gakkai (Society for the Creation of Value) and Soka Gakkai International (SGI)…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Max Ward, “Thought Crime: Ideology and State Power in Interwar Japan” (Duke UP, 2019)
Max Ward’s Thought Crime: Ideology and State Power in Interwar Japan (Duke University Press, 2019) analyzes the trajectory and transformations of the…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Sabine Frühstück, “Playing War: Children and the Paradoxes of Modern Militarism in Japan” (U California Press, 2017)
In Playing War: Children and the Paradoxes of Modern Militarism in Japan (University of California Press, 2017), Sabine Frühstück shows how children and…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Danny Orbach, “Curse on This Country: The Rebellious Army of Imperial Japan” (Cornell UP, 2017)
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…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Jakobina Arch, “Bringing Whales Ashore: Oceans and the Environment of Early Modern Japan” (U Washington Press, 2018)
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…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Jennifer Dixon, “Dark Pasts: Changing the State’s Story in Turkey and Japan” (Cornell UP, 2018)
Jennifer Dixon’s Dark Pasts: Changing the State’s Story in Turkey and Japan (Cornell University Press, 2018), investigates the Japanese and Turkish states’…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Kerim Yasar, “Electrified Voices: How the Telephone, Phonograph, and Radio Shaped Modern Japan, 1868-1945” (Columbia UP, 2018)
Electrified Voices: How the Telephone, Phonograph, and Radio Shaped Modern Japan, 1868-1945 (Columbia UP, 2018) explores the soundscapes of modernity in Japan…
- 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
Christina Yi, “Colonizing Language: Cultural Production and Language Politics in Modern Japan and Korea” (Columbia UP, 2018)
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…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Levi S. Gibbs, “Song King: Connecting People, Places and Past in Contemporary China” (U Hawaii Press, 2018)
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…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Sayaka Chatani, “Nation-Empire: Ideology and Rural Youth Mobilization in Japan and Its Colonies” (Cornell UP, 2018)
Sayaka Chatani’s Nation-Empire: Ideology and Rural Youth Mobilization in Japan and Its Colonies (Cornell University Press, 2018) tackles the fraught question…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Eiko Maruko Siniawer, “Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan” (Cornell UP, 2018)
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…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Yulia Frumer, “Making Time: Astronomical Time Measurement in Tokugawa Japan” (U Chicago Press, 2018)
Yulia Frumer’s new book follows roughly three hundred years of transformations in how time was conceptualized, measured, and materialized in Japan. Making…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Nick Kapur, “Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo” (Harvard UP, 2018)
Nick Kapur’s Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo (Harvard University Press, 2018) is an ambitious look at the transformations of…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Laura Neitzel, “The Life We Longed for: Danchi Housing and the Middle Class Dream in Postwar Japan” (MerwinAsia, 2016)
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…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Kate McDonald, “Placing Empire: Travel and the Social Imagination in Imperial Japan” (U California Press, 2017)
Kate McDonald‘s Placing Empire: Travel and the Social Imagination in Imperial Japan (University of California Press, 2017) is a thoughtful and provocative…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Anna Andreeva, “Assembling Shinto: Buddhist Approaches to Kami Worship in Medieval Japan” (Harvard Asia Center, 2017)
In her recent monograph, Assembling Shinto: Buddhist Approaches to Kami Worship in Medieval Japan (Harvard University Asia Center, 2017), Anna Andreeva focuses…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Andrew McKevitt, “Consuming Japan: Popular Culture and the Globalizing of 1980s America” (UNC Press, 2017)
In Consuming Japan: Popular Culture and the Globalizing of 1980s America (UNC Press, 2017), Andrew McKevitt explores the intense and ultimately fleeting moment…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Bryan D. Lowe, “Ritualized Writing: Buddhist Practice and Scriptural Cultures in Ancient Japan” (U of Hawaii Press, 2017)
In his recent monograph, Ritualized Writing: Buddhist Practice and Scriptural Cultures in Ancient Japan (University of Hawaii Press, 2017), Bryan D. Lowe…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Marcia Yonemoto, “The Problem of Women in Early Modern Japan” (U of California Press, 2016)
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…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Jessamyn R. Abel, “The International Minimum: Creativity and Contradiction in Japan’s Global Engagement, 1933-1964” (U. of Hawaii Press, 2015)
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…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Akiko Takenaka, “Yasukuni Shrine: History, Memory, and Japan’s Unending Postwar” (U. of Hawaii Press, 2015)
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…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Anthony Rausch, “Japan’s Local Newspapers: Chihoshi and Revitalization Journalism” (Routledge, 2012)
Anthony Rausch‘s recent work looks closely at newspapers and journalism in modern Japan, focusing especially on the nature and significance of local…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Seth Jacobowitz, “Writing Technology in Meiji Japan” (Harvard UP, 2015)
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…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Douglas Clark, “Gunboat Justice: British and American Law Courts in China and Japan (1842-1943)” (Earnshaw Books, 2016)
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…
- New Books in Japanese Studies
Christopher Bondy, “Voice, Silence, and Self: Negotiations of Buraku Identity in Contemporary Japan” (Harvard Asia Center, 2015)
“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…