New Books in East Asian Studies

Maren A. Ehlers, author of "Give and Take: Poverty and the Status Order in Early Modern Japan," explores the intricate social dynamics of Tokugawa Japan. She dives into how marginalized groups, like beggar bosses and blind guilds, influenced society's structure and governance. Ehlers highlights the roles these groups played in poverty relief and their reciprocal relationships with the government. The discussion delves into the impact of the Temmei famine on charity practices, revealing a shift towards organized relief systems and changing attitudes toward poverty.

Dan Wang, a research fellow at Stanford's Hoover History Lab, shares insights from his debut book, Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future. He contrasts China’s engineering-driven society with the U.S.'s lawyerly framework, discussing how these models affect governance and infrastructure. Delving into lesser-known Chinese cities, he highlights their complex political dynamics. Additionally, Dan addresses the impact of censorship on East Asian cinema, illustrating evolving narratives and the changing landscape of storytelling amidst governmental influences.

In this engaging discussion, Robert Cribb, an Emeritus Professor of Asian History, dives into the harrowing history of detention camps in Asia. He examines the massive scale of imprisonment, the psychological impact on detainees, and the societal implications of these camps. The podcast offers a comparative analysis with Nazi extermination camps and sheds light on Indonesia's dark political genocide. Cribb also reflects on the challenges of academic editing while delving into the complexities of historical narratives involving war crimes. It's a thought-provoking journey into a painful yet crucial aspect of modern Asian history.

Nan Z. Da, an Associate Professor of English at Johns Hopkins University, bridges the worlds of Shakespeare and Chinese history in her discussion. She delves into the parallels between King Lear and Chinese narratives, emphasizing familial discord and power struggles. Da explores how modern Chinese history resonates with the tragic themes of Lear, reflecting on authority and authoritarianism. She also shares insights on adapting Lear for Chinese audiences and hints at her future projects focusing on the Chinese diaspora.

Maria Montt Strabucchi, an Associate Professor and Vice President for International Affairs at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, discusses the unique relationship between Chile and China, highlighting historical and economic ties, including copper and lithium exports. She explores the cultural integration of the Chinese diaspora in Chile and the rising academic interest in China-related studies. Montt also addresses the challenges faced by students in East Asian studies, underscoring the importance of initiatives like the Millennium Nucleus project for fostering understanding of Chinese influence in Latin America.

China has become deeply integrated into the world economy. Yet, gradual marketization has facilitated the country's rise without leading to its wholesale assimilation to global neoliberalism. This book uncovers the fierce contest about economic reforms that shaped China's path. In the first post-Mao decade, China's reformers were sharply divided. They agreed that China had to reform its economic system and move toward more marketization - but struggled over how to go about it. Should China destroy the core of the socialist system through shock therapy, or should it use the institutions of the planned economy as market creators?With hindsight, the historical record proves the high stakes behind the question: China embarked on an economic expansion commonly described as unprecedented in scope and pace, whereas Russia's economy collapsed under shock therapy. Based on extensive research, including interviews with key Chinese and international participants and World Bank officials as well as insights gleaned from unpublished documents, How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate (Routledge, 2021) charts the debate that ultimately enabled China to follow a path to gradual reindustrialization. Beyond shedding light on the crossroads of the 1980s, it reveals the intellectual foundations of state-market relations in reform-era China through a longue durée lens.Isabella M. Weber is a political economist working on China, global trade and the history of economic thought. She is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Research Leader for China at the Political Economy Research Institute.Host Peter Lorentzen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of San Francisco, where he leads a new Master's program in Applied Economics focused on the digital economy. His own research focuses on China’s political economy and governance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

Once a powerful figure who reversed the disintegration of China and steered the country to Allied victory in World War II, Chiang Kai-shek fled into exile following his 1949 defeat in the Chinese civil war. As attention pivoted to Mao Zedong’s communist experiment, Chiang was relegated to the dustbin of history.In Chiang Kai-shek’s Politics of Shame, Grace Huang reconsiders Chiang’s leadership and legacy by drawing on an extraordinary and uncensored collection of his diaries, telegrams, and speeches stitched together by his secretaries. She paints a new, intriguing portrait of this twentieth-century leader who advanced a Confucian politics of shame to confront Japanese incursion into China and urge unity among his people. In also comparing Chiang’s response to imperialism to those of Mao, Yuan Shikai, and Mahatma Gandhi, Grace widens the implications of her findings to explore alternatives to Western expressions of nationalism and modernity and reveal how leaders of vulnerable states can use potent cultural tools to inspire their country and contribute to an enduring national identity.Grace Huang is professor of government at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY. She likes to tackle a range of intellectual questions, including: what are the conditions in leadership that promote collective inspiration versus collective hysteria or violence? How do talented subordinates weigh their ability to modify a leader’s deleterious actions against their moral culpability of participating in those policies? How does a particular democratic ideology and culture shape the choices of working mothers, and how do such mothers make decisions about care, family, and work? Her research interests include political leadership, the political uses of shame in Chinese leadership, and gender, labor, and the family. She can be reached at ghuang@stlawu.edu.Dong Wang is distinguished professor of history and director of the Wellington Koo Institute for Modern China in World History at Shanghai University (since 2016), a member of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and an elected Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

From its crude and uneasy beginnings thirty years ago, Chinese sperm banking has become a routine part of China’s pervasive and restrictive reproductive complex. Today, there are sperm banks in each of China’s twenty-two provinces, the biggest of which screen some three thousand to four thousand potential donors each year. Given the estimated one to two million azoospermic men--those who are unable to produce their own sperm--the demand remains insatiable. China’s twenty-two sperm banks cannot keep up, spurring sperm bank directors to publicly lament chronic shortages and even warn of a national ‘sperm crisis’ (jingzi weiji).Ayo Wahlberg book Good Quality: The Routinization of Sperm Banking in China (U California Press, 2018) explores the issues behind the crisis, including declining sperm quality in the country due to environmental pollution, as well as a chronic national shortage of donors. In doing so, Wahlberg outlines the specific style of Chinese sperm banking that has emerged, shaped by the particular cultural, juridical, economic and social configurations that make up China’s restrictive reproductive complex. Good Quality shows how this high-throughput style shapes the ways in which men experience donation and how sperm is made available to couples who can afford it.Victoria Oana Lupascu is a PhD candidate in dual-title doctoral program in Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. Her areas of interest include 20th and 21st Chinese literature and visual art, medical humanities and Global South studies.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

How did Tokyo—Japan’s capital, global city, tourist hotspot and financial center—get to where it is today? Tokyo–or then, Edo–had a rather unglamorous start, as a backwater on Japan’s eastern coast before Tokugawa decided to make it his de facto capital. Eiko Maruko Siniawer picks ten distinct moments in Edo’s, and then Tokyo’s, history to show how this village became one of the world’s most important cities. Moments like a brief crackdown on kabuki theater, or the opening ceremony of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics make up the chapters of what’s appropriately titled Ten Moments That Shaped Tokyo (Cambridge University Press: 2025) Eiko is the Charles R. Keller Professor of History at Williams College. A historian of modern Japan who has researched a wide range of topics, she is the author of three books—Ruffians, Yakuza, Nationalists: The Violent Politics of Modern Japan, 1860-1960 (Cornell University Press: 2015), Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan (Cornell University Press: 2024), and Ten Moments That Shaped Tokyo. She has also published articles in leading academic journals, such as “‘Affluence of the Heart’: Wastefulness and the Search for Meaning in Millennial Japan” in the Journal of Asian Studies, and “‘Toilet Paper Panic’: Uncertainty and Insecurity in Early 1970s Japan” in the American Historical Review. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Ten Moments That Shaped Tokyo. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

Better Innovations, to talk about Taiwan as a home for migrant workers, and decent work in supply chains. After a brief overview of key risks in this area, we touched upon Taiwan’s major legislation to date in a global context, and addressed the importance of economic diplomacy for Taiwan – being seen as a responsible global actor in business and human rights. Drawing on our guest’s experience as a practitioner, we then explored how Taiwanese suppliers see their role as leaders in improving labour standards. Countering stereotypical associations between businesses and human rights abuses, we investigated the possibilities, limitations and responsibilities that firms perceive for themselves in transitioning to a fairer model of labour recruitment and protection, as well as the role of the 2020 National Action Plan in setting this transition in motion. Finally, we used a regional (Asian) framework of reference to discuss the need for Taiwan’s government to provide clear guidelines that could help Taiwanese companies bridge the knowledge gap between existing local legal frameworks and international human rights standards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies