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Japanese Studies
Interviews with scholars of Japan about their new books.
July 23, 2024
Target Hong Kong
In January 1945, the final year of the Pacific War, Japanese-held Hong Kong became the site of coordinated attacks by the U.S. Navy on Japanese warshi…
July 21, 2024
The Same Moon Shines on All
Yanagawa Seigan (1789–1858) and his wife Kōran (1804–79) were two of the great poets of nineteenth-century Japan. They practiced the art of traditiona…
July 19, 2024
Graphic Narratives from Early Modern Japan
Part of a formidable publishing industry, cheap yet eye-catching graphic narratives consistently charmed early modern Japanese readers for around two …
July 18, 2024
Eliza Scidmore
Eliza Scidmore (1856-1928) was a journalist, a world traveler, a writer, an amateur photographer, the first female board member of the National Geogra…
July 13, 2024
Pan-Asianism and the Legacy of the Chinese Revolution
Recent proposals to revive the ancient Silk Road for the contemporary era and ongoing Western interest in China’s growth and development have led to i…
July 12, 2024
Beauty Matters
The notion of beauty is inherently elusive: aesthetic judgments are at once subjective and felt to be universally valid. In Beauty Matters: Modern Jap…
July 11, 2024
Waiting for the Cool Moon
In Waiting for the Cool Moon: Anti-Imperialist Struggles in the Heart of Japan's Empire (Duke UP, 2024) Wendy Matsumura interrogates the erasure of c…
June 22, 2024
Drugs and the Politics of Consumption in Japan
In early modern Japan, upper status groups coveted pills and powders made of exotic foreign ingredients such as mummy and rhinoceros horn. By the earl…
June 19, 2024
Emergent Tokyo
If ancient Kyoto stands for orderly elegance, then Tokyo, within the world’s most populated metropolitan area, calls to mind–– jam-packed chaos. But i…
June 14, 2024
The Making of Japanese Settler Colonialism
Sidney Lu’s The Making of Japanese Settler Colonialism: Malthusianism and Trans-Pacific Migration, 1868-1961 (Cambridge 2019) places the concept of “M…
June 7, 2024
A Baseball Gaijin
Like many American boys, Tony Barnette yearned to one day make it to “The Show,” playing baseball professionally. The Arizona State pitcher was drafte…
June 1, 2024
The Book of Japanese Folklore
Discover everything you’ve ever wondered about the legendary spirits, creatures, and figures of Japanese folklore including how they have found their …
May 30, 2024
Judgement at Tokyo
In December 1948, a panel of 12 judges sentenced 23 Japanese officials for war crimes. Seven, including former Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, were senten…
May 29, 2024
Imperial Japan and Defeat in the Second World War
Informed Western understanding of Imperial Japan still often conjures up images of militarism, blind devotion to leaders, and fanatical pride in the c…
May 29, 2024
Handbook of Modern and Contemporary Japanese Women Writers
The Handbook of Modern and Contemporary Japanese Women Writers (MHM Limited and Amsterdam University Press, 2022) offers a comprehensive overview of w…
May 23, 2024
Bernhard Sindberg
In December 1937, Bernhard Sindberg arrives at a cement factory outside of Nanjing. He’s one of just two foreigners, and he gets there just weeks befo…
May 21, 2024
A War of Empires
In 1941 and 1942 the British and Indian Armies were brutally defeated and Japan reigned supreme in its newly conquered territories throughout Asia. Bu…
May 19, 2024
Mooring the Global Archive
In Mooring the Global Archive: A Japanese Ship and Its Migrant Histories (Cambridge UP, 2023), Martin Dusinberre follows the Yamashiro-maru steamship …
May 17, 2024
Esoteric Buddhism in China
During the Republican period (1912–1949) and after, many Chinese Buddhists sought inspiration from non-Chinese Buddhist traditions, showing a particul…
May 7, 2024
Talking About Rakugo 1: The Japanese Art of Storytelling
Rakugo is a live performance art that has penetrated the borders of Japan and continues to gain popularity overseas. The rakugo stage once dominated b…