New Books in Japanese Studies
Interviews with Scholars of Japan about their New BooksSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies
Latest episodes
Nov 11, 2014 • 1h 7min
Clark Chilson, “Secrecy’s Power: Covert Shin Buddhists in Japan and Contradictions of Concealment” (University of Hawaii Press, 2014)
Clark Chilson‘s new book, Secrecy’s Power: Covert Shin Buddhists in Japan and Contradictions of Concealment (University of Hawai’i Press, 2014) examines secret groups of Shin (i.e., True Pure Land Buddhist) practitioners from the thirteenth century onward, but focuses primarily on the past 150 years. Although today at least thirty different... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies
Oct 2, 2014 • 1h 15min
Robert Stolz, “Bad Water: Nature, Pollution, and Politics in Japan, 1870-1950” (Duke UP, 2014)
Robert Stolz‘s new book explores the emergence of an environmental turn in modern Japan. Bad Water: Nature, Pollution; Politics in Japan, 1870-1950 (Duke University Press, 2014) guides readers through the unfolding of successive eco-historical periods in Japan. Stolz charts the transformations of an “environmental unconscious” lying at the foundation of... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies
Sep 6, 2014 • 1h 7min
Jolyon Thomas, “Drawing on Tradition: Manga, Anime, and Religion in Contemporary Japan” (University Of Hawai’i Press, 2012)
The worlds of cinema and illustrated fiction are replete with exciting data for the historian of religion. Drawing on Tradition: Manga, Anime, and Religion in Contemporary Japan (University Of Hawai’i Press, 2012), by author Jolyon Thomas, sets up a robust theoretical model for examining how the concept of religion is... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies
Sep 4, 2014 • 1h 13min
Hideaki Fujiki, “Making Personas: Transnational Film Stardom in Modern Japan” (Harvard University Asia Center, 2013)
Stardom has a history. Hideaki Fujiki‘s new book traces that history through a story of the transformations of Japanese film stars in the early twentieth century. Taking a deeply transnational approach to understanding the imbrication of film stardom and modernity in Japan, Making Personas: Transnational Film Stardom in Modern Japan... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies
Aug 16, 2014 • 1h 11min
Gregory Smits, “Seismic Japan” (University of Hawaii Press, 2013)
In two recent books, Gregory Smits offers a history of earthquakes and seismology in Japan that creates a wonderful dialogue between history and the sciences. Seismic Japan: The Long History and Continuing Legacy of the Ansei Edo Earthquake (University of Hawai’i Press, 2013) is a deeply contextualized study of the... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies
May 23, 2014 • 1h 12min
Anne Allison, “Precarious Japan” (Duke University Press, 2013)
“[All] I want to eat is a rice ball.” This was the last entry in the diary of a 52-year-old man who starved to death in an apartment he had occupied for 20 years. His is just one of many voices of the precarity of everyday life and death that... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies
Apr 18, 2014 • 1h 6min
Michael Wert, “Meiji Restoration Losers: Memory and Tokugawa Supporters in Modern Japan” (Harvard Asia Center, 2013)
Michael Wert‘s new book considers the construction of memory around the “losers” of the Meiji Restoration, individuals and groups whose reputations suffered most in the late nineteenth-century transition from Tokugawa to imperial rule. Meiji Restoration Losers: Memory and Tokugawa Supporters in Modern Japan (Harvard University Asia Center, 2013) explores the... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies
Apr 8, 2014 • 1h 7min
Miriam Kingsberg, “Moral Nation: Modern Japan and Narcotics in Global History” (University of California Press, 2013)
Miriam Kingsberg‘s fascinating new book offers both a political and social history of modern Japan and a global history of narcotics in the modern world. Moral Nation: Modern Japan and Narcotics in Global History (University of California Press, 2013) locates the emergence of a series of three “moral crusades” against... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies
Jan 7, 2014 • 1h 15min
David Spafford, “A Sense of Place: The Political Landscape in Late Medieval Japan” (Harvard University Asia Center, 2013)
So many history books take for granted that a story about the past needs to focus on change (gradual or dramatic, transformative or subtle) as its motivating narrative and argumentative core. In A Sense of Place: The Political Landscape in Late Medieval Japan (Harvard University Asia Center, 2013), David Spafford... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies
Nov 17, 2013 • 1h 5min
Darryl E. Flaherty, “Public Law, Private Practice: Politics, Profit, and the Legal Profession in Nineteenth-Century Japan” (Harvard Asia Center, 2013)
In global narratives of modern legal history, Asia tends to fall short relative to Europe and the US. According to these narratives, while individuals in the West enjoyed political participation and protection, people in Japan did not, and this was due largely to the absence of a distinction between public... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies
