New Books in East Asian Studies

North Korea is, to this day, still one of the world’s most mysterious countries. What little we know about daily life in the country comes from defectors or foreigners who’ve spent time there–some of whom have been on this show. But both camps present narrow, if not slanted, views of what life is like in the country.Korea expert Victor Cha, along with several other researchers, have put together a collection that tries to tackle the topic of North Korea with a more rigorous approach, in The Black Box: Demystifying the Study of Korean Unification and North Korea (Columbia University Press: 2024)What do we know about North Korea’s cyberwarfare capability? Do U.S.-South Korea military exercises really cause North Korean belligerence? What do ordinary North Koreans believe? And what do U.S. and South Korean experts think are their “known unknowns” when it comes to North Korea?Victor D. Cha is Distinguished University Professor, D.S. Song-KF Endowed Chair, and professor of government in the Walsh School of Foreign Service and the Department of Government at Georgetown University. He serves in senior advisory positions for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Department of Defense Policy Board, and the National Endowment for Democracy. Cha previously served on the National Security Council as director for Asian affairs.You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Black Box. 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

Taomo Zhou, an Assistant Professor at Nanyang Technological University and author of "Migration in the Time of Revolution: China, Indonesia, and the Cold War," shares intriguing insights into the lives of overseas Chinese in Indonesia. He explores the intricate ties between migration patterns and Cold War geopolitics, revealing how the Chinese diaspora navigated their identities amidst political upheaval. Zhou also discusses the historical discrimination faced by ethnic Chinese and examines shifting public perceptions of their community, painting a rich picture of resilience and complexity within this cultural landscape.

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Brynn Quick speaks with Dr. Alexandra Grey about Dr. Grey’s book entitled Language Rights in a Changing China: A National Overview and Zhuang Case Study (De Gruyter, 2021).China has had constitutional minority language rights for decades, but what do they mean today? Answering with nuance and empirical detail, this book examines the rights through a sociolinguistic study of Zhuang, the language of China’s largest minority group. The analysis traces language policy from the Constitution to local government practices, investigating how Zhuang language rights are experienced as opening or restricting socioeconomic opportunity. The study finds that language rights do not challenge ascendant marketised and mobility-focused language ideologies which ascribe low value to Zhuang. However, people still value a Zhuang identity validated by government policy and practice.Rooted in a Bourdieusian approach to language, power and legal discourse, this is the first major publication to integrate contemporary debates in linguistics about mobility, capitalism and globalization into a study of China’s language policy.This book came out in May 2021 after almost a decade of Alex’s doctoral and postdoctoral work. Her doctoral dissertation was recognised as the best dissertation on the sociology of language, internationally, through the 2018 Joshua A. Fishman Award.For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

Many authors have written about the Manila Galleons, the massive ships that took goods back and forth between Acapulco and Manila, ferrying silver one way, and Chinese-made goods the other.But how did the Galleons actually work? Who paid for them? How did buyers and sellers negotiate with each other? Who set the rules? Why on earth did the shippers decide to send just one galleon a year?Juan José Rivas Moreno dives into these questions in his book The Capital Market of Manila and the Pacific Trade, 1668-1838: Institutions and Trade during the First Globalization (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024).Juan José Rivas Moreno is a historian of early modern finance, specialising in the financing of the Pacific trade. He obtained his PhD in Economic History from London School of Economics in 2023 with a thesis on the capital market of Manila which received the Coleman Prize 2024. Juan José was the recipient of a Newberry Library short-term fellowship and held an Economic History Society Fellowship in 2023-2024. Currently he is a Max Weber fellow at the European University Institute in Florence.You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Capital Market of Manila and the Pacific Trade. 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

In this episode, our host Lara Momesso interviews Dr Isabelle Cockel, an academic based in the UK, to discuss the wider impact of her academic work. Isabelle’s extensive research on marriage and labour migrants in Taiwan has evolved into efforts to raise awareness of migrant issues beyond the academic sphere both in Asia and Europe. She has written blogs featuring migrant voices, translated and promoted films about migrants, and, whenever possible, she has worked to assist migrants in Taiwan.For those who are interested to know more about Isabelle’s work, here you can find some links: University of Portsmouth profile Migrant Biographies, series on the Blog at Leiden University:  Movie translation: The Lovable Strangers by Tsung-Lung Tsai and Nguyễn Kim Hồng  Taiwan Insight at the University of Nottingham Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

Death and Funeral Practices in Japan (Routledge, 2024) is an essential introductory text an often overlooked element of cultural expression. The books offers a succinct history to the development of funeral practices over time, and describes a typical contemporary funeral in detail. Japanese funerals reflect the strength of continuing ancestor veneration (senzo kuyō), but face the challenge of high-density urbanisation and and reduction in family size which can lead to  isolation at the time of death. The text explains new trends in funeral practices, including ‘tree burials’ and ‘eternal memorial graves’. This information is supported by material on religious, legal and governance frameworks. This text is part of an extended series of handbooks that gives the reader a clear and accessible introduction to funeral practices in countries all over the world. In this podcast, Julie Rugg of the UK's Cemetery Research Group talks to Hannah Gould about a surprising funeral culture that merges deep tradition and high-tech innovation.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

In this engaging discussion, Timothy Gitzen, an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Wake Forest University, unpacks the themes of his new book, exploring how queer Koreans are perceived as threats within the context of national security and public health. He shares striking insights about the normalization of security routines in everyday life. Gitzen also reflects on the intersection of queer activism and military life in South Korea, addressing how societal fears and discrimination shape the experiences of queer individuals amid the ongoing influence of the pandemic.

Predicting Disasters: Earthquakes, Scientists, and Uncertainty in Modern Japan (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024) takes seriously attempts to reduce uncertainty around the timing, magnitude, and location of earthquakes in postwar Japan. Covering the period between early warnings about earthquakes in 1905 right up until the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, Kerry Smith explores the different ways scientists in Japan tried to predict earthquakes, how they sought to communicate their efforts to the public, and how understandings of disasters changed in turn. Smith thus carefully embeds each earthquake within its historical context, looking at how people reacted to individual earthquakes and how each earthquake fueled further efforts to understand seismology and plan for disasters.Predicting Disasters is meticulous, thoughtful, and provides new, historically grounded understandings of how earthquakes are approached in Japan today and why the promise of prediction has never quite left Japan. Predicting Disasters is sure to appeal to those interested in modern Japanese history, the histories of science and disasters, and anyone who has ever grappled with the idea of scientific uncertainty. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

To the untrained eye there’s nothing as unexciting as tofu, normally regarded as a tasteless, beige, congealed mass of crushed, boiled soybeans. However, tofu more than stands up on its own. Reviled for decades as a vegetarian oddity, the brave, wobbly block has made a comeback.Tofu: a Culinary History (Reaktion, 2024) by Russell Thomas is a global history of bean curd stretches from ancient creation myths and tomb paintings, via Chinese poetry and Japanese Buddhist cuisine, to deportations in Soviet Russia and struggles for power on the African continent. It describes the potentially non-Chinese roots of tofu, its myriad types, why ‘eating tofu’ is an insult in Cantonese, and its environmental impact today. Warning: this book actually makes tofu exciting. It’s anything but bland.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

In this episode, our host, Ti-han, invited Taiwanese Queer author, Kevin Chen, to talk about his LGBTQ novel, Ghost Town (Europa Editions, 2022) 鬼地方 and its fever worldwide. In our conversation, Kevin shared with us how he first “come out” as a gay writer in Taiwan in the 90s, and how his writings was influenced by key Taiwanese LGBTQ authors and continue to be shaped by his migratory experiences in Berlin. He also told us how he thinks translation and the transability of a literary work can be useful in terms of authors’ impacts on society. If you’re a fan of Kevin’s writing, you certainly can’t miss this episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies