New Books in East Asian Studies

B. Gramlich-Oka and A. Walthall, "Women and Networks in Nineteenth-Century Japan" (U Michigan Press, 2020)

07 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Although scholars have emphasized the importance of women’s networks for civil society in twentieth-century Japan, Women and Networks in Nineteent...

Odd Arne Westad, "Empire and Righteous Nation: 600 Years of China-Korea Relations" (Harvard UP, 2021)

07 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Being arguably each side’s most enduring international bond, the China-Korea relationship has long been of great practical and symbolic importance t...

Shivshankar Menon, "India and Asian Geopolitics" (Brookings, 2021)

03 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

A clear-eyed look at modern India's role in Asia and the broader world. One of India's most distinguished foreign policy thinkers addresses the many ...

Kristen E. Looney, "Mobilizing for Development: The Modernization of Rural East Asia" (Cornell UP, 2020)

03 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Kristen Looney’s Mobilizing for Development: The Modernization of Rural East Asia published by Cornell University in 2020 interrogates how cou...

K. Kale Yu, "Understanding Korean Christianity: Grassroot Perspectives on Causes, Culture, and Responses" (Pickwick, 2019)

30 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The cultural landscape plays a momentous role in the transmission of Christianity. Consequently, the global expansion of the church has led to the inc...

Mary A. Brazelton, "Mass Vaccination: Citizens' Bodies and State Power in Modern China" (Cornell UP, 2019)

30 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Mary Brazelton’s new book, Mass Vaccination: Citizens’ Bodies and State Power in Modern China (Cornell UP, 2019) could hardly be more timely. D...

Jeanne Shea et al., "Beyond Filial Piety: Rethinking Aging and Caregiving in Contemporary East Asian Societies" (Berghahn, 2020)

29 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Known for a tradition of Confucian filial piety, East Asian societies have some of the oldest and most rapidly aging populations on earth. Today these...

A. Castiglioni et al, "Defining Shugendo: Critical Studies on Japanese Mountain Religion" (Bloomsbury, 2020)

26 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Andrea Castiglioni, Fabio Rambelli, and Carina Roth's edited volume Defining Shugendo: Critical Studies on Japanese Mountain Religion (Bloomsbury, 2...

Kenneth J. Ruoff, "Japan's Imperial House in the Postwar Era, 1945-2019" (Harvard UP, 2021)

23 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Ken Ruoff’s Japan’s Imperial House in the Postwar Era, 1945-2019 (Harvard UP, 2020), is a revised and expanded version of the author’s The P...

Uranchimeg Tsultemin, "A Monastery on the Move: Art and Politics in Later Buddhist Mongolia" (U Hawaii Press, 2020)

23 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

How, and why did a ger (yurt) develop into the largest and most important monastery in Mongolia, and how did it support the authority of its main resi...

Brenton Sullivan, "Building a Religious Empire: Tibetan Buddhism, Bureaucracy, and the Rise of the Gelukpa" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2020)

22 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

How did Geluk Buddhism become the most widespread school of Tibetan Buddhism in Inner Asia and beyond? In Building a Religious Empire: Tibetan Buddhi...

Robert T. Tierney, "Tropics of Savagery: The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame" (U California Press, 2010)

22 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Tropics of Savagery: The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame (U California Press, 2010) is an incisive and provocative study of the figur...

Miriam L. Kingsberg Kadia, "Into the Field: Human Scientists of Transwar Japan" (Stanford UP, 2019)

21 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

How did Japanese academics study their "fields" in places like Manchuria and Inner Mongolia in the transwar decades? How did they transform in the pos...

Y. Yvon Wang, "Reinventing Licentiousness: Pornography and Modern China" (Cornell UP, 2021)

16 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Y. Yvon Wang draws on previously untapped archives--ranging from police archives and surveys to ephemeral texts and pictures--to argue that pornograph...

Jürgen P. Melzer, "Wings for the Rising Sun: A Transnational History of Japanese Aviation" (Harvard UP, 2020)

15 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Jürgen Melzer’s Wings for the Rising Sun: A Transnational History of Japanese Aviation (Harvard UP, 2020) traces the history of Japanese aviation...

Jonathan Chatwin, "Long Peace Street: A Walk in Modern China" (Manchester UP, 2019)

15 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Changan Jie, or Long Peace Street, stretches across central Beijing. Along it are several critical historical sites, including Zhongnanhai, Tiananmen ...

Takeshi Watanabe, "Flowering Tales: Women Exorcising History in Heian Japan" (Harvard UP, 2020)

13 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Telling stories: that sounds innocuous enough. But for the first chronicle in the Japanese vernacular, A Tale of Flowering Fortunes (Eiga monogatari...

Yuichiro Onishi and Fumiko Sakashita, "Transpacific Correspondence: Dispatches from Japan's Black Studies" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019)

09 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Transpacific Correspondences: Dispatches from Japan’s Black Studies, an essay collection edited by Dr. Yuichiro Onishi and Dr Fumiko Sakashita, int...

Timon Screech, "Tokyo Before Tokyo: Power and Magic in the Shogun’s City of Edo" (Reaktion Books, 2020)

08 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In 1800, the Shogun’s chief minister wrote the following about the city of Edo: "Someone said that if Edo did not have frequent fires, then people w...

Jack W. Chen, "Anecdote, Network, Gossip, Performance: Essays on the Shishuo xinyu" (Harvard UP, 2021)

06 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Anecdote, Network, Gossip, Performance: Essays on the Shishuo xinyu (Harvard UP, 2021) is a study of the Shishuo xinyu, the most important anecdotal...

Roundtable on Asian Migrant Sex Work

06 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

This episode features three interviews with organizers and scholars concerned with Asian migrant sex work: SWAN Vancouver (Alison Clancey and Kelly ...

Constantine Nomikos Vaporis, "Voices of Early Modern Japan" (Routledge, 2020)

01 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this newly revised and updated 2nd edition of Voices of Early Modern Japan: Contemporary Accounts of Daily Life During the Age of the Shoguns (Ro...

Daniel C. Mattingly, "The Art of Political Control in China" (Cambridge UP, 2019)

01 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The Art of Political Control in China (Cambridge University Press, 2019) shows how China's authoritarian state ensures political control by non-viol...

Christopher Joby, "The Dutch Language in Japan (1600-1900): A Cultural and Sociolinguistic Study of Dutch as a Contact Language in Tokugawa and Meiji Japan" (Brill, 2020)

01 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In The Dutch Language in Japan (1600-1900): A Cultural and Sociolinguistic Study of Dutch as a Contact Language in Tokugawa and Meiji Japan (Brill,...

Dennis J. Frost, "More Than Medals: A History of the Paralympics and Disability Sports in Postwar Japan" (Cornell UP, 2021)

29 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Dennis Frost’s More than Medals: A History of the Paralympics and Disability Sports in Postwar Japan is a history of disability sports in modern J...

Yuen Yuen Ang, "China's Gilded Age: The Paradox of Economic Boom and Vast Corruption" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

29 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

How do we make sense of the “durability and gigantic scale” of China’s economic expansion alongside the reports of “rising” and “explosive...

Concepts and Methods for the Study of Chinese Religions: A Discussion with Stefania Travagnin

29 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The study of religion in China has a long history across a number of interrelated disciplines. In recent years, scholars have been reassessing past sc...

Laura Moretti, "Pleasure in Profit: Popular Prose in Seventeenth-Century Japan" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

26 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the seventeenth century, Japanese popular prose flourished as waves of newly literate readers gained access to the printed word. Commercial publish...

Justin O'Connor and Xin Gu, "Red Creative: Culture and Modernity in China" (Intellect Books, 2020)

24 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Red Creative: Culture and Modernity in China (Intellect Books, 2020) is an exploration of China’s cultural economy over the last twenty years, part...

Sean R. Roberts, "The War on the Uyghurs: China's Internal Campaign Against a Muslim Minority" (Princeton UP, 2020)

24 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

There are currently eleven million Uyghurs living in China, but more than one million are being held in so-called reeducation camps. A cultural genoc...

Simon Wickhamsmith, "Politics and Literature in Mongolia (1921-1948)" (Amsterdam UP, 2020)

24 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

How does revolution literature help to engage Mongolia’s nomadic population with the utopia of a “new society” promised by the Mongolian People’...

Sarah Kovner, "Prisoners of the Empire: Inside Japanese POW Camps" (Harvard UP, 2020)

24 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Sarah Kovner’s Prisoners of the Empire: Inside Japanese POW Camps (Harvard UP, 2020) is a nuanced look at the experiences, narratives―and the po...

Daniel Poch, "Licentious Fictions: Ninjō and the Nineteenth-Century Japanese Novel" (Columbia UP, 2019)

23 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Nineteenth-century Japanese literary discourse and narrative developed a striking preoccupation with ninjō—literally “human emotion,” but ofte...

Tansen Sen and Brian Tsui, "Beyond Pan-Asianism: Connecting China and India, 1840s-1960s" (Oxford UP, 2020)

22 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

What were the stories of modern China-India relations in the age of empires? How did India and China engage with each other beyond pan-Asianist and an...

Clara Iwasaki, "Rethinking the Modern Chinese Canon: Refractions Across the Transpacific" (Cambria Press, 2020)

19 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The texts that are examined in this study move in and out of different languages or are multilingual in their origins. Texts and authors do not move r...

James Hadley and Nell Regan, "A Gap in the Clouds: A New Translation of Ogura Hyakunin Isshu" (Dedalus Press, 2020)

19 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Compiled around 1235, the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, or Ogura's 100 Poems by 100 Poets, is one of the most important collections of poetry in Japan. Though...

Olga V. Solovieva and Sho Konishi, "Japan's Russia: Challenging the East-West Paradigm" (Cambria, 2021)

18 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The Russian cultural presence in Japan after the Meiji Revolution was immense. Indeed, Japanese cultural negotiations with Russian intellectuals and R...

Erin L. Brightwell, "Reflecting the Past: Place, Language, and Principle in Japan's Medieval Mirror Genre" (Harvard UP, 2020)

16 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Reflecting the Past: Place, Language, and Principle in Japan's Medieval Mirror Genre (Harvard UP, 2020) is the first English-language study to addres...

Jie Li, "Utopian Ruins: A Memorial Museum of the Mao Era" (Duke UP, 2020)

11 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In Utopian Ruins: A Memorial Museum of the Mao Era (Duke University Press, 2020) Jie Li traces the creation, preservation, and elision of memories...

Johanna O. Zulueta, "Transnational Identities on Okinawa’s Military Bases: Invisible Armies" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019)

10 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In Transnational Identities on Okinawa’s Military Bases: Invisible Armies (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019), Johanna Zulueta considers the role of civil...

Xiaoping Fang, "China's Cholera Pandemic: Restructuring Society Under Mao" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2021)

09 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward campaign organized millions of Chinese peasants into communes in a misguided attempt to rapidly collectivize agricul...

Nadine Willems, "Ishikawa Sanshiro's Geographical Imagination" (Leiden UP, 2020)

08 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Ishikawa Sanshirō (1876-1956) was a journalist, intellectual, and self-proclaimed socialist active in early twentieth-century Japan. In Ishikawa San...

Winifred Bird, "Eating Wild Japan: Tracking the Culture of Foraged Foods, with a Guide to Plants and Recipes" (Stone Bridge Press, 2021)

01 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Winifred Bird’s Eating Wild Japan: Tracking the Culture of Foraged Foods, with a Guide to Plants and Recipes (Stone Bridge Press, 2021) is more t...

Fabio Rambelli, "The Sea and the Sacred in Japan: Aspects of Maritime Religion" (Bloomsbury, 2018)

26 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In The Sea and the Sacred in Japan: Aspects of Maritime Religion (Bloomsbury 2018), Fabio Rambelli invites various fifteen scholars of Japanese rel...

Suyoung Son, "Writing for Print: Publishing and the Making of Textual Authority in Late Imperial China" (Harvard UP, 2018)

24 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Suyoung Son’s book Writing for Print: Publishing and the Making of Textual Authority in Late Imperial China (Harvard UP, 2018) examines the widesp...

Ji Zhe et al., "Buddhism after Mao: Negotiations, Continuities, and Reinventions" (U Hawaii Press, 2020)

24 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

With over 100 million followers, Buddhism in the People's Republic of China now fosters the largest community in the world of individuals who self-id...

G. Girard and T. Lockley, "African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan" (Hanover Square Press, 2021)

24 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The remarkable life of history's first foreign-born samurai and his astonishing journey from Northern Africa to the heights of Japanese society. When ...

A Roundtable on the History of the Japanese Student Movement: A Discussion with Naoko Koda and Chelsea Szendi Schieder

24 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Chelsea Szendi Schieder’s Co-Ed Revolution: The Female Student in the Japanese New Left and Naoko Koda’s The United States and the Japanese Stu...

Rana Mitter, "Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937–1945" (HMH, 2013)

19 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

If we wish to understand the role of China in today’s global society, we would do well to remind ourselves of the tragic, titanic struggle which tha...

Studying LBGT Organizing in China: A Conversation with Caterina Fugazzola

18 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In today’s episode of Ethnographic Marginalia, Sneha Annavarapu talks with Dr. Caterina Fugazzola, Earl S Johnson Instructor in Sociology at the Un...

Eika Tai, "Comfort Women Activism: Critical Voices from the Perpetrator State" (Hong Kong UP, 2020)

17 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Eika Tai’s Comfort Women Activism: Critical Voices from the Perpetrator State (Hong Kong University Press, 2020) tackles the complex histories of ...

Nicholas Jepson, "In China's Wake: How the Commodity Boom Transformed Development Strategies in the Global South" (Columbia UP, 2019)

17 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

From 2002 to 2013, China’s rapid economic growth caused a boom in the prices of commodities—particularly of metals, fuel, and soybeans. According ...

Torsten Weber, "Embracing 'Asia' in China and Japan: Asianism Discourse and the Contest for Hegemony, 1912-1933" (Springer, 2018)

12 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Embracing ‘Asia’ in China and Japan: Asianism Discourse and the Contest for Hegemony (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) by Torsten Weber examines how A...

Michael R. Auslin, "Asia's New Geopolitics: Essays on Reshaping the Indo-Pacific" (Hoover Institution Press, 2020)

08 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Is the Indo-Pacific already the most dominant in terms of global power, politics, and wealth? In his newest book, Michael R. Auslin considers the k...

Gwyn McClelland, "Dangerous Memory in Nagasaki: Prayers, Protests and Catholic Survivor Narratives" (Routledge, 2019)

08 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

On 9th August 1945, the US dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Of the dead, approximately 8500 were Catholic Christians, representing over six...

Linda C. Ehrlich, "The Films of Kore-eda Hirokazu: An Elemental Cinema" (Palgrave, 2019)

05 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The Films of Kore-eda Hirokazu: An Elemental Cinema (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019) draws readers into the first 13 feature films and 5 of the documentar...

Stephen R. Bokenkamp, "A Fourth-Century Daoist Family: The Zhen’gao, or Declarations of the Perfected, Volume 1" (U California Press, 2020)

01 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The Zhen’gao, or Declarations of the Perfected is one of the most important Daoist texts, and a literary classic in its own right. The Declarati...

Richard M. Jaffe, "Seeking Sakyamuni: South Asia in the Formation of Modern Japanese Buddhism" (U Chicago Press, 2019)

29 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Though fascinated with the land of their tradition’s birth, virtually no Japanese Buddhists visited the Indian subcontinent before the nineteenth ce...

Yujie Zhu, "Heritage and Romantic Consumption in China" (Amsterdam UP, 2018)

29 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The drums beat, an old man in a grand robe mutters incantation and three brides on horseback led by their grooms on foot proceed to the Naxi Wedding C...

Theresia Hofer, "Medicine and Memory in Tibet: Amchi Physicians in an Age of Reform" (U Washington Press, 2018)

29 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Medicine and Memory in Tibet: Amchi Physicians in an Age of Reform (University of Washington Press, 2018) is the first full-length ethnography of Tib...

Wesley C. Robertson, "Scripting Japan: Orthography, Variation, and the Creation of Meaning in Written Japanese" (Routledge, 2020)

29 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Imagine this book was written in Comic Sans. Would this choice impact your image of me as an author, despite causing no literal change to the content ...

Bill Sewell, "Constructing Empire: The Japanese in Changchun, 1905-45" (UBC Press, 2019)

25 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

What happens to everyday-life in a city when it becomes subsumed into an empire? Who becomes responsible for the everyday building and management of t...

Benno Weiner, "The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier" (Cornell UP, 2020)

25 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier (Cornell University Press, 2020) Benno Weiner provides an in-depth study of what happened when the...

Andray Abrahamian, "Being in North Korea" (Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, 2019)

21 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

As well as presenting practical challenges, addressing the question ‘what is it like in North Korea?’ raises ethical concerns around who is entitl...

Ian M. Miller, "Fir and Empire: The Transformation of Forests in Early Modern China" (U Washington Press, 2020)

21 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Ian M. Miller’s book Fir and Empire: The Transformation of Forests in Early Modern China (University of Washington Press, 2020) offers a transform...

Roberta Zavoretti, "Rural Origins, City Lives: Class and Place in Contemporary China" (U Washington Press, 2016)

20 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Many of the millions of workers streaming in from rural China to jobs at urban factories soon find themselves in new kinds of poverty and oppression. ...

Els van Dongen, "Realistic Revolution: Contesting Chinese History, Culture, and Politics after 1989" (Cambridge UP, 2019)

18 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

What is the role of the intellectual? Is violence, not to mention radical change, necessary? Can there be a revolution without them? Realistic Revolu...

David Chaffetz, "Three Asian Divas: Women, Art and Culture In Shiraz, Delhi and Yangzhou" (Abbreviated Press, 2019)

14 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The “diva” is a common trope when we talk about culture. We normally think of the diva as a Western construction: the opera singer, the Broadway a...

Matjaz Ursic and Heide Imai, "Creativity in Tokyo: Revitalizing a Mature City" (Palgrave, 2020)

14 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In Creativity in Tokyo: Revitalizing a Mature City (Palgrave, 2020), Heide Imai and Matjaz Ursic focues on overlooked contextual factors that const...

Guojun Wang, "Staging Personhood: Costuming in Early Qing Drama" (Columbia UP, 2020)

14 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Much is known about the Qing sartorial regulations and how the Qing conquerors forced Han Chinese males to adopt Manchu hairstyle and clothing. But wh...

Clara Han, "Seeing Like a Child: Inheriting the Korean War" (Fordham UP, 2020)

13 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Intertwining autobiography and ethnography, Clara Han’s touching new book Seeing Like a Child: Inheriting the Korean War (Fordham University Press...

Rachel Silberstein, "A Fashionable Century: Textile Artistry and Commerce in the Late Qing" (U Washington Press, 2020)

13 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Rachel Silberstein’s book A Fashionable Century: Textile Artistry and Commerce in the Late Qing (University of Washington Press, 2020) reveals how...

Woojeong Joo, "Cinema of Ozu Yasujiro: Histories of the Everyday" (Edinburgh UP, 2017)

11 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

One of the most well regarded of non-Western film directors, responsible for acknowledged classics like Tokyo Story (1953), Ozu Yasujiro worked duri...

Michael Fisch, "An Anthropology of the Machine: Tokyo's Commuter Train Network" (U of Chicago Press, 2018)

08 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

With its infamously packed cars and disciplined commuters, Tokyo’s commuter train network is one of the most complex technical infrastructures on Ea...

Nicholas Bartlett, "Recovering Histories: Life and Labor after Heroin in Reform-Era China" (U California Press, 2020)

08 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Heroin first reached Gejiu, a Chinese city in southern Yunnan known as Tin Capital, in the 1980s. Widespread use of the drug, which for a short period...

William C. Hedberg, "The Japanese Discovery of Chinese Fiction: The Water Margin and the Making of a National Canon" (Columbia UP, 2019)

07 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The classic Chinese novel The Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan) tells the story of a band of outlaws in twelfth-century China and their insurrection again...

Gracia Liu-Farrer, "Immigrant Japan: Mobility and Belonging in an Ethno-nationalist Society" (Cornell UP, 2020)

07 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Immigrant Japan? Sounds like a contradiction, but as Gracia Liu-Farrer shows in Immigrant Japan Mobility and Belonging in an Ethno-nationalist Societ...

William W. Kelly, "The Sportsworld of the Hanshin Tigers: Professional Baseball in Modern Japan" (University of California Press, 2018)

05 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Baseball has been Japan's most popular sport for over a century. In The Sportsworld of the Hanshin Tigers: Professional Baseball in Modern Japan (Un...

Kelly A. Hammond, "China's Muslims and Japan's Empire: Centering Islam in World War II" (UNC Press, 2020)

30 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The 1930s-40s expansion of the Japanese empire was marked by significant interest among Japan-based scholars and policy-makers in China’s Muslim pop...

John Wei, "Queer Chinese Cultures and Mobilities: Kinship, Migration, and Middle Classes" (Hong Kong UP, 2020)

29 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

John Wei’s book Queer Chinese Cultures and Mobilities: Kinship, Migration, and Middle Classes (Hong Kong University Press, 2020) studies queer cul...

Jonathan C. Slaght, "Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest Owl" (FSG, 2020)

24 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The Blakiston’s fish owl is the world’s largest living species of owl, with larger females of the species weighing as much as ten pounds. It lives...

Courtney Bruntz and Brooke Schedneck, "Buddhist Tourism in Asia" (U Hawaii Press, 2020)

22 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This edited volume is the first book-length study of Buddhist tourism in contemporary Asia in the English language. Featuring chapters from diverse co...

David Fedman, "Seeds of Control: Seeds of Control: Japan’s Empire of Forestry in Colonial Korea" (U Washington Press, 2020)

22 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

David Fedman's Seeds of Control: Seeds of Control: Japan’s Empire of Forestry in Colonial Korea (University of Washington Press, 2020) is hard t...

Paul Goldin, "The Art of Chinese Philosophy: Eight Classical Texts and How to Read Them" (Princeton UP, 2020)

21 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Paul Goldin's book The Art of Chinese Philosophy: Eight Classical Texts and How to Read Them (Princeton UP, 2020) provides an unmatched introduction...

Enze Han, "Asymmetrical Neighbors: Borderland State-Building Between China and Southeast Asia" (Oxford UP, 2019)

21 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Asymmetrical Neighbors: Borderland State-Building Between China and Southeast Asia (Oxford UP, 2019) explains the variations in state building across...

Yuen Yuen Ang, "China's Gilded Age: The Paradox of Economic Boom and Vast Corruption" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

18 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Yuen Yuen Ang, a Professor of political science and China expert at the University of Michigan. We spoke already in summer 2019 to ...

Sharon J. Yoon, "The Cost of Belonging: An Ethnography on Solidarity and Mobility in Beijing's Koreatown" (Oxford UP, 2020)

16 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

How vulnerable can you be as a researcher? Why, in a commercially successful city like Wangqing, are Chinese Koreans more successful in their business...

Noel John Pinnington, "A New History of Medieval Japanese Theatre: Noh and Kyōgen from 1300 to 1600" (Springer, 2019)

15 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Noel Pinnington's A New History of Medieval Japanese Theatre: Noh and Kyōgen from 1300 to 1600 (Palgrave, 2019) traces the history of noh and kyō...

Geoffrey C. Goble, "Chinese Esoteric Buddhism: Amoghavajra, the Ruling Elite, and the Emergence of a Tradition" (Columbia UP, 2019)

15 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In his recent book, Chinese Esoteric Buddhism: Amoghavajra, the Ruling Elite, and the Emergence of a Tradition (Columbia University Press, 2019), Ge...

Jack Meng-Tat Chia, "Monks in Motion: Buddhism and Modernity Across the South China Sea" (Oxford UP, 2020)

09 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Monks in Motion: Buddhism and Modernity Across the South China Sea (Oxford University Press 2020) is the first monograph in the English language to e...

Nicole CuUnjieng Aboitiz, "Asian Place, Filipino Nation: A Global Intellectual History of the Philippine Revolution, 1887-1912" (Columbia UP, 2020)

09 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The Philippine Revolution of 1896-1905, which began against Spain and continued against the United States, took place in the context of imperial subju...

Rana Mitter, "China's Good War: How World War II Is Shaping a New Nationalism" (Harvard UP, 2020)

08 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Although World War II had been largely remembered in the People’s Republic of China as an experience of victimization since its founding in 1949, th...

Eyck Freymann, "One Belt One Road: Chinese Power Meets the World" (Harvard UP, 2020)

02 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

China’s One Belt One Road policy, or OBOR, represents the largest infrastructure program in history. Yet little is known about it with any certainty...

Vince Cable, "China: Engage!--Avoid The New Cold War" (Bite-Sized Books, 2020)

02 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Anyone doing business with China will have been shocked by the speed with which political and economic relations with Western, and some other, countri...

Covell F. Meyskens, "Mao's Third Front: The Militarization of Cold War China" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

01 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1964, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) made a momentous policy decision. In response to rising tensions with the United States and Soviet Union, a...

Paul Jankowski, "All Against All: The Long Winter of 1933 and the Origins of the Second World War" (Harper, 2020)

30 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In his latest monograph, All Against All: The Long Winter of 1933 and The Origins of the Second World War (Harper, 2020), Professor Paul Jankowski (...

Elizabeth Son, "Embodied Reckonings: 'Comfort Women,' Performance, and Transpacific Redress" (U Michigan Press, 2018)

25 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In a bustling city-center of Seoul, women in yellow vests protesting over the “final” resettlement between the Japanese and Korean governments eve...

Xiaowei Wang, "Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China's Countryside" (FSG Originals, 2020)

25 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Most of our discussions about how “technology will change the world” focus on the global cities that drive the world economy. Even when we talk ab...

Sebastian Strangio, "In the Dragon's Shadow: Southeast Asia in the Chinese Century" (Yale UP, 2020)

23 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

For centuries Southeast Asia has enjoyed a relatively pleasant relationship with China, its massive neighbor to the north. While Chinese merchants and...

David Tobin, "Securing China's Northwest Frontier: Identity and Insecurity in Xinjiang" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

20 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Greater interest in what is happening in the northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang in recent years has generated a proportional need for context, an...