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Japanese Studies
Japanese Studies March 19, 2023

The God Susanoo and Korea in Japan’s Cultural Memory

Ancient Myths and Modern Empire

David Weiss

Hosted by Raditya Nuradi
The God Susanoo and Korea in Japan’s Cultural Memory: Ancient Myths and Modern Empire (Bloomsbury, 2022) traces reiterations and reinterpretations of the deity Susanoo regarding his relationship with Korea vis-a-vis Japan. Through …

Japanese Studies

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Interviews with scholars of Japan about their new books.

Japanese Studies March 18, 2023

Women and Martial Art in Japan

Kate Sylvester

Hosted by Nathan Hopson
Kate Sylvester’s Women and Martial Art in Japan (Routledge 2023) examines sport, gender, and society in Japan through the author’s extensive experience and ethnographic research as a kendo practitioner both …
Japanese Studies March 10, 2023

Science for Governing Japan's Population

Aya Homei

Hosted by Nathan Hopson
Aya Homei’s Science for Governing Japan’s Population (Cambridge UP, 2022) examines the science and policy of population in Japan, 1860s-1960s. As in other modern nation-states and empires, population has been …
Japanese Studies March 8, 2023

Madness in the Family

Women, Care, and Illness in Japan

H. Yumi Kim

Hosted by Ran Zwigenberg
To fend off American and European imperialism in the nineteenth century, Japan strove to strengthen itself by drawing on the most updated ideas and practices from around the world. By …
Japanese Studies March 7, 2023

Spiritual Ends

Religion and the Heart of Dying in Japan

Timothy O. Benedict

Hosted by Nathan Hopson
Timothy Benedict’s Spiritual Ends: Religion and the Heart of Dying in Japan (U California Press, 2023) is an exploration of spiritual care in the context of the Japanese hospice. The …
Nordic Asia Podcast March 3, 2023

The Iko-Project

A Japanese Project on Intercultural Understanding Education

Marie Roesgaard

Hosted by Nordic Asia Podcast
What can a classroom experiment teach us about how and when we start shaping our ideas of ‘the other’? Can the results from such an experiment help us challenge the …
Recall This Book March 2, 2023

Nuclear Ghosts

A Discussion with Ryo Morimoto

Ryo Morimoto

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
John and Elizabeth, in this special Centennial episode of Recall this Book, explore spectral radiation with Ryo Morimoto, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. His new book Nuclear Ghost …
Asian Review of Books March 2, 2023

Our Man in Tokyo

An American Ambassador and the Countdown to Pearl Harbor

Steve Kemper

Hosted by Nicholas Gordon
In the years leading up to the Second World War, the U.S. was represented in Japan by Ambassador Joseph Grew: born from a patrician family, Harvard-educated, ran away to the …
East Asian Studies February 24, 2023

Imperial Gateway

Colonial Taiwan and Japan's Expansion in South China and Southeast Asia, 1895-1945

Seiji Shirane

Hosted by Nathan Hopson
Seiji Shirane’s Imperial Gateway: Colonial Taiwan and Japan's Expansion in South China and Southeast Asia, 1895-1945 (Cornell UP, 2022) demonstrates that colonial Taiwan was an imperial center in its own …
Japanese Studies February 22, 2023

The EU Migrant Generation in Asia

Middle-Class Aspirations in Asian Global Cities

Helena Hof

Hosted by Shatrunjay Mall
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 Aspirations in Asian Global Cities (Policy …
Women's History February 17, 2023

The Comfort Women of Singapore in History and Memory

Kevin Blackburn

Hosted by Miranda Melcher
"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 comfort …
East Asian Studies February 10, 2023

Knowing Manchuria

Environments, the Senses, and Natural Knowledge on an Asian Borderland

Ruth Rogaski

Hosted by Ed Pulford
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 projected onto it. Everyone …
SSEAC Stories February 9, 2023

A New Hope?

Japanese Retirement Migration to Malaysia

Shiori Shakuto

Hosted by Natali Pearson
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 migration is the …
Latino Studies February 6, 2023

Transborder Los Angeles

An Unknown Transpacific History of Japanese-Mexican Relations

Yu Tokunaga

Hosted by David-James Gonzales
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 Transpacific History of Japanese-Mexican Relations …
Japanese Studies February 1, 2023

Sexual Abuse and Education in Japan

In the (Inter)National Shadows

Robert O'Mochain and Yuki Ueno

Hosted by Jingyi Li
Bringing together two voices, practice and theory, in a collaboration that emerges from lived experience and structured reflection upon that experience, O'Mochain and Ueno show how entrenched discursive forces exert …
Japanese Studies January 7, 2023

Administering Affect

Pop-Culture Japan and the Politics of Anxiety

Daniel White

Hosted by Nathan Hopson
In Administering Affect: Pop-Culture Japan and the Politics of Anxiety (Stanford UP, 2022), Daniel White draws on extensive fieldwork in government ministries and government-adjacent organizations to explore Japan’s current “politics …
Asian Review of Books January 5, 2023

A Continent Erupts

Decolonization, Civil War, and Massacre in Postwar Asia, 1945-1955

Ronald H. Spector

Hosted by Nicholas Gordon
On September 2, 1945, Japan surrendered to the United States, ending the Second World War. Yet the Japanese invasion had upended the old geopolitical structures of European empires, leaving old …
Japanese Studies December 25, 2022

The Pleasures of Metamorphosis

Japanese and English Fairy Tale Transformations of "The Little Mermaid"

Lucy Fraser

Hosted by Amanda Kennell
“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 The Pleasures of Metamorphosis: Japanese and …
Japanese Studies December 24, 2022

Haruki Murakami and the Search for Self-Therapy

Stories from the Second Basement

Jonathan Dil

Hosted by Jingyi Li
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 he needed self-therapy …
Japanese Studies December 23, 2022

Anime's Identity

Performativity and Form Beyond Japan

Stevie Suan

Hosted by Jingyi Li
A formal approach to anime rethinks globalization and transnationality under neoliberalism Anime has become synonymous with Japanese culture, but its global reach raises a perplexing question--what happens when anime is …