New Books in East Asian Studies
Episodes
David Krolikoski, "Lyrical Translation: The Creation of Modern Poetry in Colonial Korea" (U Hawai'i Press, 2026)
02 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Lyrical Translation: The Creation of Modern Poetry in Colonial Korea (U Hawai'i Press, 2026)is a literary history of modern Korean poetry's o...
Andrea Horbinski, "Manga's First Century: How Creators and Fans Made Japanese Comics, 1905-1989" (U California Press, 2025)
30 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Andrea Horbinski's Manga's First Century: How Creators and Fans Made Japanese Comics, 1905-1989 (U California Press, 2025) centers the fans and...
Through the Lens of Taiwan: Film, History, and Identity
30 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This podcast episode is hosted by Mart Tšernjuk, the Taiwan Coordinator at the University of Tartu Asia who is talking to Prof. Robert Chen, a leadin...
Ker Gibbs, "The Fragile Dragon: Trade, Trump, and China's Vulnerabilities" (Earnshaw Books, 2026)
25 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The Fragile Dragon offers a unique exploration of China's rapid transformation and its evolving commercial relationship with the West. Drawing on the ...
Charlotte Linton, "Dyeing with the Earth: Textiles, Tradition, and Sustainability in Contemporary Japan" (Duke UP, 2025)
24 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The past, present and future of ethical production in fashion In Dyeing with the Earth, Charlotte Linton explores the intersection of small-scale tr...
Mujun Zhou, "The Death and Life of Chinese Civil Society" (U Michigan Press, 2026)
24 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In a society undergoing rapid transformation, how do people engage in debates around a foreign concept and in doing so, pursue contested political fut...
Daisuke Miyao, "Ozu and the Ethics of Indeterminacy" (Duke UP, 2026)
22 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Ozu and the Ethics of Indeterminacy (Duke University Press, 2026) re-examines cinema studies through the work of Japanese filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu, em...
Qi Ai, "Feng Xiaogang's New Year Films: Industry, Regulation, Humour and Authorship" (Routledge, 2025)
20 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Feng Xiaogang's New Year Films: Industry, Regulation, Humour and Authorship (Routledge, 2025) offers not only an in-depth study of Feng Xiaogang as a...
Myung-jin Han with Nicolas Levi, "I Was a North Korean Diplomat: Inside the Secret World of Pyongyang's Foreign Service" (Independently Published, 2026)
18 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Nicolas Levi is a researcher at the Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He has authored numerous book...
The Shawshank Redemption in China: An Interview with Matti Lehtonen
17 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
How can an entirely foreign cast perform the American “The Shawshank Redemption” in the Chinese language across China? In this episode of the Nord...
New Book Releases 2026 on Japan, Taiwan
17 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This episode of the Books on Asia podcast introduces new fiction and non-fiction on Japan to be published this year, 2026, along with two upcoming boo...
Daniel A. Bell, "Why Ancient Chinese Political Thought Matters: Four Dialogues on China’s Past, Present, and Future" (Princeton UP, 2026)
15 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Daniel A. Bell joins the podcast to discuss his new book, Why Ancient Chinese Political Thought Matters: Four Dialogues on China’s Past, Present, a...
Yingyi Ma, "Ambitious and Anxious: How Chinese College Students Succeed and Struggle in American Higher Education" (Columbia UP, 2020)
15 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In Ambitious and Anxious: How Chinese College Students Succeed and Struggle in American Higher Education (Columbia UP, 2020), sociologist Yingyi Ma ...
Ted Goossen on translating Hiromi Kawakami’s “Third Love”
10 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Translator Ted Goossen talks about everything from first landing in Japan in 1968 to the differences between translating Haruki Murakami and Hiromi Ka...
Ruth Mandujano López, "Steamships Across the Pacific: Maritime Journeys between Mexico, China, and Japan, 1867–1914" (U Hong Kong Press, 2025)
09 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
How did the movement of people, goods, and ships reshape connections between Latin America and Asia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuri...
Ho-fung Hung, "The China Question: Eight Centuries of Fantasy and Fear" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
06 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
"The contempt and naive idealization of China are two sides of the same coin. The latter cannot be an antidote to the former." So argues Ho-Fung Hung...
Marty Friedman with Jon Wiederhorn, "Dreaming Japanese" (Permuted Press, 2024)
03 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Marty Friedman is a multi-platinum recording artist and government-appointed Ambassador to Japan Heritage. He has written three books in Japanese and ...
Avner Greif et al., "Two Paths to Prosperity: Culture and Institutions in Europe and China, 1000–2000" (Princeton UP, 2025)
02 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
It’s one of the biggest questions in economic history: How did a richer, more advanced China fall behind Europe? Why was Europe the home of the Indu...
Kristina Jonutytė, "Between the Buddha and the New Tsar: Urban Religion and Minority Politics at the Asian Borderlands of Russia" (Cornell UP, 2026)
01 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Between the Buddha and the New Tsar: Urban Religion and Minority Politics at the Asian Borderlands of Russia (Cornell UP, 2026) by Dr. Kristina Jonut...
Jeffrey Wasserstrom, "Everything You Wanted to Know about China*: * But Were Afraid to Ask" (Brixton Ink, 2025)
31 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What does Xi Jinping share with Mao Zedong? Why is Confucius still central to a communist state? What really happened in Tiananmen Square—and why is...
Peter Mauch, "Tojo: The Rise and Fall of Japan's Most Controversial World War II General" (Harvard UP, 2026)
31 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The military general who became Emperor Hirohito’s prime minister, Tojo Hideki is most often remembered as an iron-fisted leader who dragged Japan i...
Gregory Smits, "The Ryukyu Islands: A New History from the Stone Age to the Present" (U Chicago Press, 2026)
30 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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, ...
Nellie Chu, "Precarious Accumulation: Fast Fashion Bosses in Transnational Guangzhou" (Duke UP, 2026)
28 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In Precarious Accumulation: Fast Fashion Bosses in Transnational Guangzhou (Duke UP, 2026), the cultural anthropologist Nellie Chu tells the story o...
Robert Whiting, "Gamblers, Fraudsters, Dreamers & Spies: The Outsiders who Shaped Modern Japan (Tuttle, 2024)
27 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Amy Chavez talks with Robert Whiting about his recently released book Gamblers, Fraudsters, Dreamers & Spies: The Outsiders who Shaped Modern Japan ...
James Lin, "The Global Vanguard: Agrarian Development and the Making of Modern Taiwan" (U California Press, 2025)
25 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean for a small state to imagine itself as a model for the developing world? And how were these visions of agrarian development received...
Hiromi Ito, "The Thorn Puller" (Stone Bridge Press, 2022)
20 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Hiromi Ito author of The Thorn Puller (originally published in Japanese as Toge-nuki Jizo: Shin Sugamo Jizo engi) came to national attention in Ja...
Christopher Munn, "Penalties of Empire: Capital Trials in Colonial Hong Kong" (Hong Kong UP, 2025)
17 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Who bore the burdens of empire? Christopher Munn's Penalties of Empire: Capital Trials in Colonial Hong Kong (Hong Kong UP, 2025) explores ho...
Cheng Li, "Contested Environmentalisms: Trees and the Making of Modern China" (Stanford UP, 2025)
12 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
For decades, tree planting and forestry have been pivotal to Chinese environmentalism. During the Mao era, while forests were razed to fuel rapid incr...
Cheng Li, "Contested Environmentalisms: Trees and the Making of Modern China" (Stanford UP, 2025)
12 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
For decades, tree planting and forestry have been pivotal to Chinese environmentalism. During the Mao era, while forests were razed to fuel rapid incr...
Guoqi Xu, "The Idea of China: A Contested History" (Harvard UP, 2026)
08 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What counts as China, and who counts as Chinese? China became a capitalist superpower by investing in globalization. Now that it has established its ...
Patrick Chung, "Standardizing Empire: The US Military, Korea, and the Origins of Military-Industrial Capitalism" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026)
06 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Standardizing Empire: The US Military, Korea, and the Origins of Military-Industrial Capitalism (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026) by Dr. Patrick Chung tr...
Honghong Tinn, "Island Tinkerers: Innovation and Transformation in the Making of Taiwan's Computing Industry" (MIT Press, 2024)
26 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
How Taiwan rose to global prominence in high tech manufacturing, from computer maker to the world's leading chip manufacturer. How did Taiwan, a for...
Bin Chen, "Hui Muslims in the Shaping of Modern China: Education, Frontier Politics, and Nation-State" (Routledge, 2025)
16 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Chen examines the Chinese Nationalist government's distinctive support for private Muslim teachers schools between the 1920s and 1940s, and explores t...
Su Hwa Keum, "From Juche to Jesus: A Study of Worldview Transformation Among North Korean Defector Christians in South Korea" (Pickwick Publications, 2025)
16 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In From Juche to Jesus: A Study of Worldview Transformation Among North Korean Defector Christians in South Korea (Pickwick Publications, 2025), Su ...
Sugata Bose, "Asia after Europe: Imagining a Continent in the Long Twentieth Century" (Harvard UP, 2024)
15 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The balance of global power changed profoundly over the course of the twentieth century, above all with the economic and political rise of Asia. Asia...
Competing Visions for International Order
13 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Are we living in an era of competing international orders? A new book, entitled Competing Visions for International Order: Challenges for a Shared Di...
Kristin Roebuck, "Japan Reborn: Race and Eugenics from Empire to Cold War" (Columbia UP, 2025)
10 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In her book Japan Reborn: Race and Eugenics from Empire to Cold War (Columbia UP, 2025), historian Kristin Roebuck grapples with the question: Wh...
Rosina Buckland and Oleg Benesch, "Samarai" (British Museum, 2025)
07 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Samurai (British Museum Press 2026) is a richly illustrated volume co-authored by exhibition curator Rosina Buckland (British Museum) and Oleg Bene...
Gregory T. Chin and Kevin P. Gallagher, "China and the Global Economic Order" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
02 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
China and the Global Economic Order (Cambridge University Press, 2026) examines China's evolving relations with the Bretton Woods institutions (BWIs...
Stevan Harrell, "An Ecological History of Modern China" (U Washington Press, 2023)
01 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Is environmental degradation an inevitable result of economic development? Can ecosystems be restored once government officials and the public are com...
Natasha Heller, "Literature for Little Bodhisattvas: Making Buddhist Families in Modern Taiwan" (U Hawai'i Press, 2025)
26 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In Literature for Little Bodhisattvas: Making Buddhist Families in Modern Taiwan (U Hawai'i Press, 2025), Natasha Heller makes two key interventi...
Jenny Banh, "Fantasies of Hong Kong Disneyland: Attempted Indigenizations of Space, Labor, and Consumption" (Rutgers UP, 2025)
25 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Fantasies of Hong Kong Disneyland: Attempted Indigenizations of Space, Labor, and Consumption (Rutgers UP, 2025) examines the attempt to transplant ...
Cross-Border Intimacies: Affect and Emotions in Marriage Migration Between China and Taiwan
23 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Transnational marriage migration is among the many features of cross-border mobility that characterise the globalised world. This is also the case in ...
Anne Sokolsky ed., "Bold Breaks: Japanese Women and Literary Narratives of Divorce" (U Hawaii Press, 2025)
20 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The various words for “divorce” in Japanese—rien, enkiri, fūfu wakare, rikon—reflect how the socially constructed institutions of marriage an...
Min Joo Lee, "Finding Mr. Perfect: K-Drama, Pop Culture, Romance, and Race" (Rutgers UP, 2025)
18 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Finding Mr. Perfect: K-Drama, Pop Culture, Romance, and Race (Rutgers UP, 2025) by Dr. Min Joo Lee explores the romantic relationships between Korean...
Di Wu et. al, eds., "China As Context: Anthropology, Post-globalisation and the Neglect of China" (Manchester UP, 2025)
16 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
A provocative collaborative project, China as Context challenges the marginalization of Chinese-grounded ideas in academia, arguing that neglecting ...
Q. Edward Wang, "Staple to Superfood: A Global History of the Sweet Potato" (Columbia UP, 2025)
14 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Sweet potatoes were among the American crops Christopher Columbus brought back to Europe—where they were thought to be an aphrodisiac. In China, thi...
Alvin K. Wong, "Unruly Comparison: Queerness, Hong Kong, and the Sinophone" (Duke UP, 2025)
13 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
How do we compare across languages, media, and histories, all without flattening differences? And what might Hong Kong teach us about doing comparison...
Re-examining the Women’s Movement in Cold War South Korea and Beyond
09 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In the past decade, feminism has become one of the heated topics in public debate in South Korea. Feminism is embraced by activists, attacked in elect...
Serk-Bae Suh, "Against the Chains of Utility: Sacrifice and Literature in 1970s and 1980s South Korea" (U Hawaii Press, 2025)
07 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Against the Chains of Utility: Sacrifice and Literature in 1970s and 1980s South Korea (University of Hawaii Press, 2025) explores literary texts tha...
Bo Tao, "Cooperative Evangelist: Kagawa Toyohiko and His World, 1888-1960" (U Hawaii Press, 2025)
06 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Cooperative Evangelist: Kagawa Toyohiko and His World, 1888-1960 (University of Hawai’i Press, 2025) by Bo Tao uncovers the extraordinary world of ...
Thomas J. Mazanec, "Poet-Monks: The Invention of Buddhist Poetry in Late Medieval China" (Cornell UP, 2024)
05 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Poet-Monks focuses on the literary and religious practices of Buddhist poet-monks in Tang-dynasty China to propose an alternative historical arc of m...
Florentine Koppenborg, "Japan's Nuclear Disaster and the Politics of Safety Governance" (Cornell UP, 2023)
05 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Florentine Koppenborg’s Japan’s Nuclear Disaster and the Politics of Safety Governance (Cornell UP, 2023) begins with the understated observatio...
Shuchen Xiang, "Chinese Cosmopolitanism: The History and Philosophy of an Idea" (Princeton UP, 2023)
04 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
A provocative defense of a forgotten Chinese approach to identity and difference. Historically, the Western encounter with difference has been catastr...
Kerry Brown, "The Great Reversal: Britain, China and the 400-Year Contest for Power" (Yale UP, 2024)
01 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In the sixteenth century, Queen Elizabeth I tried to send several letters to her Chinese counterpart, the Wan Li Emperor. The letters tried to ask the...
Thomas David DuBois, "China in Seven Banquets: A Flavourful History" (Reaktion Books, 2024)
28 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of New Books Network, Laura Goldberg speaks with Thomas David DuBois, Professor at Beijing Normal University, about his book China in...
Andrea Gevurtz Arai ed., "Spaces of Creative Resistance: Social Change Projects in Twenty-First-Century East Asia" (Rutgers UP, 2025)
27 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
An exciting collection of stories of change that most people don’t usually hear from the bottom up, from the grassroots, about what’s happening in...
Joel S. Wit, "Fallout: The Inside Story of America's Failure to Disarm North Korea" (Yale UP, 2025)
26 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
After nearly four decades of negotiations, sanctions, summits, threats, and backdoor channels, the United States has failed to stop North Korea's nucl...
Suvi Rautio, "The Invention of Tradition in China: Story of a Village and a Nation Remade" (Springer Nature, 2024)
25 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today, anthropologist Professor Anru Lee is joining NBN as a guest host to interview me, Suvi Rautio, on my new book, The Invention of Tradition in ...
Weila Gong, "Implementing a Low-Carbon Future: Climate Leadership in Chinese Cities" (Oxford UP, 2025)
24 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This episode explores what China’s subnational climate experiments tell us about the possibilities and limits of climate leadership in an era of int...
Simon Avenell, "A History of Postwar Japan: Recovery, Prosperity, and Transformation" (U Hawaii Press, 2025)
23 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This sweeping history tells the story of contemporary Japan from its defeat in the Asia-Pacific War in 1945 until the early decades of the new millenn...
Tourism and a Kyoto in Flux: A Conversation with Dr. Chiara Rita Napolitano
22 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In today’s episode Julia Olsson continues her talk with Dr. Chiara Rita Napolitano from last episode, and they discuss the issue of overtourism and ...
Gian Piero Persiani, "Poets, Patrons, and the Public: Poetry as Cultural Phenomenon in Courtly Japan" (Brill, 2025)
19 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Waka poetry was all the rage in tenth-century, courtly Japan. Every educated person composed it, emperors and consorts sponsored it, and societal int...
Joseph Torigian, "The Party’s Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping" (Stanford UP, 2025)
18 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Xi Zhongxun’s career spanned the entirety of China’s modern history. Born just two years after the 1911revolution that overthrew the Qing Dynasty,...
Yan-ho Lai, "Legal Resistance Under Authoritarianism: The Struggle for the Rule of Law in Hong Kong" (Amsterdam UP, 2025)
16 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today I spoke with Senior Fellow at the Centre for Asian Law, University of Georgetown, Dr Yan-ho Lai (Eric) about his book, Legal Resistance under...
Machiya, Seikatsu Bunka, and Changing Domestic Culture in the Japanese Urban Environment
15 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Kyoto is known as a pinnacle of Japanese history and culture, drawing visitors of more than double its resident population many times over every year....
Yasmin Cho, "Politics of Tranquility: The Material and Mundane Lives of Buddhist Nuns in Post-Mao Tibet" (Cornell UP, 2025)
15 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Politics of Tranquility: The Material and Mundane Lives of Buddhist Nuns in Post-Mao Tibet (Cornell University Press, 2025) concerns the Tibetan Budd...
Liang Qichao, "Thoughts from the Ice-Drinker’s Studio: Essays on China and the World" (Penguin Classics, 2023)
13 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Thoughts from the Ice-Drinker’s Studio: Essays on China and the World (Penguin Classics, 2023) brings together a newly translated selection of pre-...
Andrew Bernstein, "Fuji: A Mountain In The Making" (Princeton UP, 2025)
11 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Great Wave is perhaps the most famous piece of Japanese artwork: a roaring blue wave and three boats on the ocean. And far in the background is M...
Shilla Lee , "Crafting Rural Japan: Traditional Potters and Rural Creativity in Regional Revitalization" (Routledge, 2024)
07 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Centering collaborations and frictions around a Japanese town’s pottery industry, Crafting Rural Japan: Traditional Potters and Rural Creativity in...
Alexander Cooley and Alexander Dukalskis, "Dictating the Agenda: The Authoritarian Resurgence in World Politics" (Oxford UP, 2025)
03 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Following the end of the Cold War, the world experienced a remarkable wave of democratization. Over the next two decades, numerous authoritarian regim...
John Kieschnick, "Buddhist Historiography in China" (Columbia UP, 2022)
01 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Since the early days of Buddhism in China, monastics and laity alike have expressed a profound concern with the past. In voluminous historical works, ...
Micah S. Muscolino, "Remaking the Earth, Exhausting the People: The Burden of Conservation in Modern China" (U Washington Press, 2025)
25 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From the 1940s to the 1960s, soil and water conservation measures transformed both the arid, erosion-prone environment of China’s Loess Plateau and ...
Yanqiu Zheng, "In Search of Admiration and Respect: Chinese Cultural Diplomacy in the United States, 1875–1974" (U Michigan Press, 2024)
21 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean for a country to seek admiration — and what kinds of institutions try to make that admiration possible? Yanqiu Zheng’s In Sear...
Jennifer Yip, "Grains of Conflict: The Struggle for Food in China’s Total War, 1937-1945" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
15 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How did China’s Nationalists feed their armies during the long war against Japan? In her new book, Grains of Conflict: The Struggle for Food in Chi...
Yunxiang Gao, "Arise Africa, Roar China: Black and Chinese Citizens of the World in the Twentieth Century" (UNC Press, 2021)
08 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Arise Africa, Roar China: Black and Chinese Citizens of the World in the Twentieth Century (University of North Carolina Press, 2021) explores the c...
Fang Yu Hu, "Good Wife, Wise Mother: Educating Han Taiwanese Girls Under Japanese Rule" (U Washington Press, 2024)
06 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Good Wife, Wise Mother: Educating Han Taiwanese Girls Under Japanese Rule (U Washington Press, 2024), female education and citizenship serve...
Christopher Nelson, "When the Bones Speak: The Living, the Dead, and the Sacrifice of Contemporary Okinawa" (Duke UP, 2025)
05 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Haunted by the past, ordinary Okinawans struggle to live with the unbearable legacies of war, Japanese nationalism, and American imperialism. They are...
Mark L. Clifford, "The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong's Greatest Dissident, and China's Most Feared Critic" (Free Press, 2024)
04 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The extraordinary life story of the billionaire businessman Jimmy Lai, a leading Hong Kong democracy activist fighting for freedom of speech who be...
Mark L. Clifford, "The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong's Greatest Dissident, and China's Most Feared Critic" (Free Press, 2024)
04 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The extraordinary life story of the billionaire businessman Jimmy Lai, a leading Hong Kong democracy activist fighting for freedom of speech who be...
AI, News, and the State: Reinstitutionalising Journalism in Global China’s Algorithmic Age: A conversation with Dr. Joanne Kuai
03 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How is artificial intelligence transforming journalism as both a profession and an institution? In this episode, Ning Ao speaks to Dr. Joanne Kuai, ex...
Joe Watkins, "Indigenizing Japan: Ainu Past, Present, and Future" (U Arizona Press, 2025)
26 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Indigenizing Japan: Ainu Past, Present, and Future (University of Arizona Press, 2025), archaeologist Joe E. Watkins provides a comprehensive lo...
Taru Salmenkari, "Global Ideas, Local Adaptations: Chinese Activism and the Will to Make Civil Society" (Edward Elgar, 2025)
24 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Exploring the boundaries, fringes, and inner workings of civil society, Taru Salmenkari investigates local forms of political agency in China in light...
Yong-Shik Lee, "Sustainable Peace in Northeast Asia" (Anthem Press, 2023)
22 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the long run, countries in Northeast Asia will have to see the need for collective defense. Otherwise, you won’t be able to stop rivalry between ...
Mia Yinxing Liu, "Literati Lenses: Wenren Landscape in Chinese Cinema of the Mao Era" (U Hawai’i Press, 2019)
21 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Chinese cinema has a long history of engagement with China’s art traditions, and literati (wenren) landscape painting has been an enduring source of...
Megan Walsh, "The Subplot: What China Is Reading and Why It Matters" (Columbia Global Reports, 2022)
21 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What does contemporary China’s diverse and exciting fiction tell us about its culture, and the relationship between art and politics? The Subplot: ...
Stevie Suan, "Anime's Identity: Performativity and Form Beyond Japan" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)
20 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A formal approach to anime rethinks globalization and transnationality under neoliberalism Anime has become synonymous with Japanese culture, but its ...
Rehan Abeyratne, "Courts and LGBTQ+ Rights in an Age of Judicial Retrenchment" (Oxford UP, 2025)
16 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Democratic backsliding, culture wars and partisan politics in the past two decades has seen the regression of human rights protections in the courts ...
Chandra Chiara Ehm, "Queens Without a Kingdom Worth Ruling: Buddhist Nuns and the Process of Change in Tibetan Monastic Communities" (Vajra Books, 2024)
15 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Queens without a Kingdom worth Ruling: Buddhist Nuns and the Process of Change in Tibetan Monastic Communities is a fascinating study of nuns in the...
Michelle Wang, "The Art of Terrestrial Diagrams in Early China" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
14 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What can a map do, beyond showing us where things are? Michelle Wang's new book, The Art of Terrestrial Diagrams in Early China (U Chicago Press, 2...
Robert L. Worden and Jane Leung Larson, "A Chinese Reformer in Exile: Kang Youwei and the Chinese Empire Reform Association in North America, 1899-1911" (Brill, 2025)
10 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A Chinese Reformer in Exile: Kang Youwei and the Chinese Empire Reform Association in North America, 1899-1911 is an encyclopaedic reference work doc...
Monica Liu, "Seeking Western Men: Email-Order Brides Under China's Global Rise" (Stanford UP, 2022)
06 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Commercial dating agencies that facilitate marriages across national borders comprise a $2.5 billion global industry. Ideas about the industry are rif...
Xiaobo Lü, "Domination and Mobilization: The Rise and Fall of Political Parties in China's Republican Era" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
05 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How and why did the Chinese Communist Party rise to power in the 1940s at the expense of its Nationalist (KMT) rival? In his new book, Domination and...
M. G. Sheftall, "Nagasaki: The Last Witnesses" (Penguin Random House, 2025)
01 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Nagasaki: The Last Witnesses (Penguin Random House, 2025) is the second volume in a prize-worthy two-book series based on years of irreplicable pers...
Todd A. Henry ed., "Queer Korea" (Duke UP, 2025)
27 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Edited by Todd A. Henry, Queer Korea (Duke UP, 2020) offers a vital and long-overdue examination of this subject. More than an academic text, it...
Xiang Biao and Wu Qi, "Self as Method: Thinking Through China and the World" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)
22 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today I had the pleasure of talking to Professor Xiang Biao on his new book, Self as Method: Thinking Through China and the World, which was origin...
Yu Zhang, "Going to the Countryside: The Rural in the Modern Chinese Cultural Imagination, 1915–1965" (U Michigan Press, 2020)
20 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, modern Chinese intellectuals, reformers, revolutionaries, leftist journalists, and idealistic youth ofte...
Christopher Joby, "Christian Mission in Seventeenth-Century Taiwan: A Reception History of Texts, Beliefs, and Practices" (Brill, 2025)
19 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How do new ideas and beliefs take root when they cross cultural and linguistic borders? In seventeenth-century Taiwan, both Dutch and Spanish missiona...
Sam Dalrymple, "Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia" (William Collins, 2025)
04 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Partition—the rapid, uncoordinated, and bloody split between India and Pakistan after the Second World War—remains the central event of South Asia...
Margaret E. Roberts, "Censored: Distraction and Diversion Inside China’s Great Firewall" (Princeton UP, 2020)
01 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We often think of censorship as governments removing material or harshly punishing people who spread or access information. But Margaret E. Roberts’...