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Interviews with scholars of East Asia about their new books.
How have Buddhist teachings come to be in modern and contemporary Japan and how are they taught? This pioneering work seeks to answer these questions …
Most people only know one of the Ryukyu Islands: the island of Okinawa, home to sandy beaches and one of the U.S.’s most important bases in Asia. Ther…
Islam and Maoism in Southern Yunnan: State Violence and Resistance, 1949–2024 (Cornell University Press, 2026) by Dr. Xian Aubin Wang investigates …
During the Great Leap Forward (1958-62), the collectivization of the Chinese countryside had catastrophic results, but how did this short-lived politi…
The Power of Publishing in Early Modern Tibetan Buddhism (Lexington Books, 2025) is a rich exploration of the history of Tibetan books during the late…
In 2012, China debuted its first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, a refurbished Soviet-era ship from Ukraine. The debut of the Liaoning was largely tha…
Indonesia is often framed as a key arena of China-Japan-US competition in the Second Cold War. In this episode, we talk with Trissia Wijaya about her …
Wayfaring: Photography in Taiwan, 1950s–1980s (Australian Centre on China in the World, 2025) explores four transformative decades of photography in T…
Korean New Religions (Cambridge University Press, 2025) is an excellent primer for anyone interested in modern Korea’s religious landscape. The Korea…
The connections between Hong Kong and Japan began far earlier than many realise. Yet only recently has Hong Kong’s historic Japanese community receive…
Colin Flahive is an American entrepreneur and writer who has spent more than two decades living and running social enterprises in southwestern China. …
Home to 25 million people, Shanghai is the most populous and wealthiest city in China. A meeting point between China and the wider world, the city …
Walmart: Made in China (Stanford University Press, 2026) by Dr. Eileen Otis tells the story of Walmart's expansion in China, making the case that…
With Taiwan Travelogue winning the 2026 International Booker Prize, Taiwanese literature in translation has achieved new heights of visibility in the …
How did a vast, nationwide institution like a modern postal system come into being in Qing China — right at the very end of the empire? In The Maki…
Chunmei Du is an Associate Professor of History at Lingnan University. Her work focuses on the social and cultural history of modern China, specifical…
In The Narrowing Sea: Fukuoka, Pusan, and the Rise and Fall of an Imperial Region (U California Press, 2025), Hannah Shepherd examines the shared hist…
Meanings of Antiquity: Myth Interpretation in Premodern Japan (Harvard UP, 2023) is the first dedicated study of how the oldest Japanese myths, record…
Jeremy Yellen’s The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: When Total Empire Met Total War (Cornell University Press, 2019) is a challenging transnat…
Anxious Homes: Inflexible Demand and China's Housing Market (Cornell UP, 2026) is a study of the power that shapes the forms of the homes Chinese citi…