New Books in Japanese Studies

Hakkenden is a classic work of Japanese literature: the story of the eight warriors, born from Princess Fuse and the dog Yatsufusa, has been adapted to manga, movies and anime. And its tropes continue to pop up in Japanese popular culture today.But there’s so much story in Hakkenden that Eight Dogs, or "Hakkenden": Part One―An Ill-Considered Jest (Cornell University Press: 2021), a new translation by Glynne Walley, doesn’t even get to the eight warriors before it’s end! Glynne’s translation sets the scene for the emergence of the eight dog warriors, translating everything in the book–including the medicine ads the author included to help pay the bills.In this interview, Glynne and I talk about what makes Hakkenden so special, Glynne’s translation choices, and how its themes and tropes persist to the present day.Glynne Walley is an Associate Professor of Japanese Literature at the University of Oregon and author ofGood Dogs: Edification, Entertainment & Kyokutei Bakin's Nansō Satomi hakkenden (Cornell East Asia Series, 2018), the first monograph-length study of Hakkenden, a landmark of premodern Japanese fiction.You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Hakkenden. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate 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/japanese-studies

Postcolonial feminist scholarship on the formation of gender relations primarily uses the analytic of colonizer-colonized dyad. In her new monograph, Gender Politics at Home and Abroad: Protestant Modernity in Colonial-Era Korea (Cambridge UP, 2020), Professor Hyaeweol Choi makes an important intervention by examining colonial Korea to propose a new framework that accounts for transnational encounters between national reformists, missionaries, and colonial authorities. Drawing from both major and minor archives in various geographic sites such as Korea, Japan, the US, Sweden, and Denmark, Choi locates the voices of the educated Korean women whose reform rhetoric and activities reflect transnational encounters. Postcolonial studies have shown us how archives are a contentious, political site with prominent feminist scholar Antoinette Burton pointing out the need to understand the interdependence between discursive visibility of minoritized people and their experiences. Through her research, Choi is able to show how educated women, despite their status as an elite minority, points to the larger structure of patriarchy and how it is constantly contested and reshaped by forces such as the state, ideologies of western domesticity, and religion.Gender Politics at Home and Abroad is an important read for scholars and public who are interested in postcolonial feminism, domesticity, transnational history, and colonial modernity. Hyaeweol Choi is a Professor who holds joint appointments with Religious Studies and Gender, Women's and Sexuality Studies at the University of Iowa. She is also a C. Maxwell and Elizabeth M. Stanley Family and Korea Foundation Chair in Korean Studies. Her publications include Gender and Mission Encounters in Korea: New Women, Old Ways (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), New Women in Colonial Korea: A Sourcebook (London: Routledge, 2013), and Gender Politics at Home and Abroad: Protestant Modernity in Colonial-era Korea (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020).Da In Ann Choi is a PhD student at UCLA in the Gender Studies department. Her research interests include care labor and migration, reproductive justice, social movement, citizenship theory, and critical empire studies. She can be reached at dainachoi@g.ucla.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

Corey Ichigen Hess is an ordained Zen monk and body therapist. He lived a monastic life for many years at Sogenji Zen Monastery in Okayama, Japan. He teaches meditation classes and works with individual clients doing private embodiment process coaching sessions, Sourcepoint Therapy, Structural Integration, and Biodynamic Craniosacral therapy at his home on Whidbey Island in Langley, Washington. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

A Bowl for a Coin: A Commodity History of Japanese Tea (U Hawaii Press, 2019) is the first book in any language to describe and analyze the history of all Japanese teas from the plant’s introduction to the archipelago around 750 to the present day. To understand the triumph of the tea plant in Japan, William Wayne Farris begins with its cultivation and goes on to describe the myriad ways in which the herb was processed into a palatable beverage, ultimately resulting in the wide variety of teas we enjoy today. Along the way, he traces in fascinating detail the shift in tea’s status from exotic gift item from China, tied to Heian (794–1185) court ritual and medicinal uses, to tax and commodity for exchange in the 1350s, to its complete nativization in Edo (1603–1868) art and literature and its eventual place on the table of every Japanese household. Farris maintains that the increasing sophistication of Japanese agriculture after 1350 is exemplified by tea farming, which became so advanced that Meiji (1868–1912) entrepreneurs were able to export significant amounts of Japanese tea to Euro-American markets. This in turn provided the much-needed foreign capital necessary to help secure Japan a place among the world’s industrialized nations. Tea also had a hand in initiating Japan’s “industrious revolution”: From 1400, tea was being drunk in larger quantities by commoners as well as elites, and the stimulating, habit-forming beverage made it possible for laborers to apply handicraft skills in a meticulous, efficient, and prolonged manner. In addition to aiding in the protoindustrialization of Japan by 1800, tea had by that time become a central commodity in the formation of a burgeoning consumer society. The demand-pull of tea consumption necessitated even greater production into the postwar period—and this despite challenges posed to the industry by consumers’ growing taste for coffee. A Bowl for a Coin makes a convincing case for how tea—an age-old drink that continues to adapt itself to changing tastes in Japan and the world—can serve as a broad lens through which to view the development of Japanese society over many centuries.Jingyi Li is a PhD Candidate in Japanese History at the University of Arizona. She researches about early modern Japan, literati, and commercial publishing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

In this timely and insightful new book, Markus Bell presents the case study of Korean-Japanese – “Zainichi” – who have escaped North Korea in the years following the end of the Cold War. Through building alliances and long-distance relationships, Zainichi returnees resist forced integration and push back against life-threatening political purges to forge new ways of belonging and, ultimately, surviving against the odds. Outsiders: Memories of Migration to and From North Korea (Berghahn, 2022) is the story of Korean families who, despite experiencing loss, trauma and dislocation, manage to remake themselves in the process of transplanting their lives.Dr. Markus Bell is an anthropologist specializing in forced migration and labour migration, with over a decade of experience working with displaced people and migrant workers in the Asia Pacific region. He has taught at the Australian National University, University of Sheffield, and Goethe University, Frankfurt. He earned his PhD from the Australian National University in 2016. He works as a long-term consultant for the United Nations International Organisation for Migration, and is also a Research Fellow at La Trobe University, Melbourne. Tweets @mpsbellLamis Abdelaaty is an assistant professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. She is the author of Discrimination and Delegation: Explaining State Responses to Refugees (Oxford University Press, 2021). Email her comments at labdelaa@syr.edu or tweet to @LAbdelaaty. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

Does the rise of China mean that studying Japan is inexorably declining? Many students become interested in Japan because of popular culture, such manga and video games: is this a good or a bad thing? In an era of Google Translate and nifty smartphone apps, do people still need to spend years and years learning Japanese? What kind of problems do prevailing notions of methodological nationalism create for the study of Japan? And how can scholars of Japan best adapt to the rapidly-changing academic landscape?In this wide-ranging conversation with NIAS Director Duncan McCargo, Aike P. Rots, an associate professor of Japan Studies at the University of Oslo, explains the thinking behind an engaging March 2022 keynote address he gave to a conference at Copenhagen Business School on the topic of ‘Japan and Japanese Studies in the Twenty-First Century’.Aike Rots works on a variety of Asia-related issues, including religion, culture, biodiversity and the environment. He currently holds a European Research Council Starter Grant entitled ‘entitled ‘Whales of Power: Aquatic Mammals, Devotional Practices, and Environmental Change in Maritime East Asia’ .Read his short article on methodological nationalism in Japanese studies here:The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo.We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcastAbout NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

After Japan’s devastating defeat in World War II, by late 1945, local Japanese turned their energies towards creating new behaviors and institutions that would give young people better skills to combat repression at home and coercion abroad. They rapidly transformed their political culture – policies, institutions, and public opinion – to create a more equitable, democratic, and peaceful society.Post-Fascist Japan: Political Culture in Kamakura after the Second World War (Bloomsbury, 2018) by Laura Hein explores this phenomenon, focusing on a group of highly educated Japanese based in the city of Kamakura, where the new political culture was particularly visible. The book argues that these leftist elites, many of whom had been seen as ‘the enemy’ during the war, saw the problem as one of fascism, an ideology that had succeeded because it had addressed real problems. They turned their efforts to overtly political-legal systems but also to ostensibly non-political and community institutions such as universities, art museums, local tourism, and environmental policies, aiming not only for reconciliation over the past but also to reduce the anxieties that had drawn so many towards fascism.Crucially, Hein uses “post-fascism” to denote the worldviews of progressives and leftists who had experienced fascism, and therefore wanted to create a new political culture from its ashes. This is a form of “anti-fascism” but shaped by the experience of fascism, and different from how scholars in other contexts have used the term “post-fascism” to denote neo-fascist movements in different parts of the world.By focusing on people who had an outsized influence on Japan's political culture, Hein's study is local, national, and transnational. She grounds her discussion using specific personalities, showing their ideas about ‘post-fascism’, how they implemented them and how they interacted with the American occupiers.With authoritarianism undergoing a contemporary resurgence, Post-Fascist Japan reminds us of how local Japanese intellectuals and policymakers built institutions, crafted policies, and tried to imagine a world after fascism, following the deadliest conflict in human history.Laura Hein is the Harold H. and Virginia Anderson Professor of History at Northwestern University. She specializes in modern Japan, and her research focuses on the history of Japan in the 20th century, its international relations, and the effects of World War II and the Cold War. She is the author of numerous books and articles, many of which have been translated into Japanese.Shatrunjay Mall is a PhD candidate at the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He works on transnational Asian history, and his dissertation explores intellectual, political, and cultural intersections and affinities that emerged between Indian anti-colonialism and imperial Japan in the twentieth century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

The Visual Culture of Meiji Japan: Negotiating the Transition to Modernity (Routledge, 2021) examines the visual culture of Japan's transition to modernity, from 1868 to the first decades of the twentieth century. Through this important moment in Japanese history, contributors reflect on Japan's transcultural artistic imagination vis-a-vis the discernment, negotiation, assimilation, and assemblage of diverse aesthetic concepts and visual pursuits. The collected chapters show how new cultural notions were partially modified and integrated to become the artistic methods of modern Japan, based on the hybridization of major ideologies, visualities, technologies, productions, formulations, and modes of representation. The book presents case studies of creative transformation demonstrating how new concepts and methods were perceived and altered to match views and theories prevalent in Meiji Japan, and by what means different practitioners negotiated between their existing skills and the knowledge generated from incoming ideas to create innovative modes of practice and representation that reflected the specificity of modern Japanese artistic circumstances. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, Japanese studies, Asian studies, and Japanese history, as well as those who use approaches and methods related to globalization, cross-cultural studies, transcultural exchange, and interdisciplinary studies.Jingyi Li is a PhD Candidate in Japanese History at the University of Arizona. She researches about early modern Japan, literati, and commercial publishing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

Eric Lancaster is an instructor of Japanese at the University of Missouri and an instructor of religious studies at Columbia College. He is a member of Bunraku Bay Puppet Theatre troupe, whose film, "Kaiju Bunraku," was screened at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

To say that World War II and Southeast Asia: Economy and Society under Japanese Occupation (Cambridge University Press, 2020) is an impressive achievement is a huge understatement. Based on years of research in over two dozen archives on three continents, this book won the Lindart-Williamson prize from the Economic History Association. World War II and Southeast Asia: Economy and Society under Japanese Occupation explores how Japan, as part of its plan to build an East Asian empire and secure oil supplies essential for war in the Pacific, swiftly took control of Southeast Asia. Dr. Huff describes the occupation’s devastating economic impact on the region. Japan imposed country and later regional autarky on Southeast Asia, dictated that the region finance its own occupation, and sent almost no consumer goods. GDP fell by half everywhere in Southeast Asia except Thailand. Famine and forced labor accounted for most of the 4.4 million Southeast Asian civilian deaths under Japanese occupation. World War II and Southeast Asia presents a new understanding of Southeast Asian history and development before, during and after the Pacific War.Gregg is Senior Research Fellow at Pembroke College, University of Oxford. He is the author of The Economic Growth of Singapore: Trade and Development in the Twentieth Century and co-editor of and contributor to World War II Singapore: The Chōsabu Reports on Syonan-to. Gregg has large number of publications in the Journal of Economic History, Economic History Review, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Oxford Economic Papers, Cambridge Journal of Economics, World Development, Modern Asian Studies and Journal of Southeast Asian Studies.Michael G. Vann is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 2018). When he’s not reading or talking about new books with smart people, Mike can be found surfing in Santa Cruz, California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies