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Japanese Studies
Interviews with scholars of Japan about their new books.
April 10, 2026
Ted Goossen on translating Hiromi Kawakami’s “Third Love"
Translator Ted Goossen talks about everything from first landing in Japan in 1968 to the differences between translating Haruki Murakami and Hiromi Ka…
April 9, 2026
Steamships across the Pacific
How did the movement of people, goods, and ships reshape connections between Latin America and Asia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuri…
April 3, 2026
Dreaming Japanese
Marty Friedman is a multi-platinum recording artist and government-appointed Ambassador to Japan Heritage. He has written three books in Japanese and …
April 1, 2026
Twelve Japanese War Criminals and One Who Got Away
“Japanese war crimes are notorious. During the Second World War, as Japanese forces overran Southeast Asia and the Pacific, they massacred, murdered, …
March 31, 2026
Tojo
The military general who became Emperor Hirohito’s prime minister, Tojo Hideki is most often remembered as an iron-fisted leader who dragged Japan int…
March 30, 2026
The Ryukyu Islands
The Ryukyu Islands between Japan and Taiwan consist of around 160 islands and are home to about 1.5 million inhabitants. Across the islands' history, …
March 27, 2026
Gamblers, Fraudsters, Dreamers & Spies
Amy Chavez talks with Robert Whiting about his recently released book Gamblers, Fraudsters, Dreamers & Spies: The Outsiders who Shaped Modern Japan (…
March 26, 2026
The Battle of Manila
On Feb. 6, 1945, just three days after the U.S. army started to fight the Japanese in the city of Manila, General Douglas MacArthur declared that “Man…
March 20, 2026
Hiromi Ito, "The Thorn Puller" (Stone Bridge Press, 2022)
Hiromi Ito author of The Thorn Puller (originally published in Japanese as Toge-nuki Jizo: Shin Sugamo Jizo engi) came to national attention in Japan…
March 18, 2026
Supernatural Japan
Supernatural Japan: Izumi Kyoka and the Global Fantastic (U Michigan Press, 2026)examines the role of Japanese writer Izumi Kyōka (1873–1939) in the …
March 10, 2026
Psychoanalytic Explorations Into the Primal Relationship in Japan and India
In this episode of the New Books Network, I sat down with the contributors of Psychoanalytic Explorations into the Primal Relationship in Japan and In…
March 1, 2026
Textures of Mourning
Reginald Jackson’s inspiring new book takes a transdisciplinary approach to rethinking how we read, how we pay attention, and why that matters deeply …
February 23, 2026
The Islands and the Stars
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is among the six largest national space agencies in the world, along with China's CNSA, US's NASA, and R…
February 21, 2026
Victimhood Nationalism
Nationalism today depends on the perception of victimhood. The historical memory of past suffering endows nationalist movements with political legitim…
February 18, 2026
Out of the Ballpark
All over the world, masses of people watch, follow, document, and obsess over baseball. Everything remarkable about the impact of baseball derives fro…
February 10, 2026
Japan Reborn
In her book Japan Reborn: Race and Eugenics from Empire to Cold War (Columbia UP, 2025), historian Kristin Roebuck grapples with the question: Why did…
February 7, 2026
Samurai
Samurai (British Museum Press 2026) is a richly illustrated volume co-authored by exhibition curator Rosina Buckland (British Museum) and Oleg Benesch…
January 21, 2026
The Most Awful Responsibility
Dropping the atomic bombs on Japan during World War II was, arguably, the most controversial decision of the 20th century. The responsibility for that…
January 20, 2026
Bold Breaks
The various words for “divorce” in Japanese—rien, enkiri, fūfu wakare, rikon—reflect how the socially constructed institutions of marriage and family,…
January 18, 2026
Globalizing the Soybean
Ines Prodöhl’s Globalizing the Soybean: Fat, Feed, and Sometimes Food, c. 1900-1950 (Routledge, 2023) is a history of how, why, and where the soybean …