New Books in Japanese Studies Marshall Poe

Like many American boys, Tony Barnette yearned to one day make it to “The Show,” playing baseball professionally. The Arizona State pitcher was drafted in 2006 by the in-state Diamondbacks. Gradually ascending the minor-league ladder, it looked like this was the beginning of a blessed life, where he could play the game he loved on the grandest of stages in front of family and friends.
But things don’t always work out the way we want.
On the verge of achieving his lifelong dream after notching a league-high 14 wins in Triple A, Tony looked ahead to 2010 with optimism. That’s when Japan came calling, offering a significant salary hike in exchange for forgoing a likely forthcoming big-league debut.
The Diamondbacks agreed to release Tony so he could play for Tokyo’s Yakult Swallows, the renowned Yomiuri Giants’ intra-city rivals.
At the time, the only thing he had in common with the country was a love for baseball. He did not know the language and was unfamiliar with Nippon Professional Baseball and essentially everything else. On his own in a strange land, the burning desire to one day make the major leagues never subsided. He knew the odds were against him, as less than one quarter of gaijin (Japanese for “foreigner”) ballplayers who go to Japan appear in the majors at any point thereafter.
First-year struggles led to multiple demotions and his end-of-year release. But when you’re chasing a dream, you expect to encounter several obstacles. Tony refused to be deterred. Over six seasons in Japan, the starter became a reliever and then a closer. After a strong 2015 season, in which he guided his long-suffering Swallows to the Japan Series, he finally got the call he had been waiting for. Signing with the Texas Rangers in December, Tony would make his first major-league appearance on April 5, 2016, at age thirty-two. He’d go on to pitch four seasons with the Rangers and Chicago Cubs, fulfilling a lifelong dream.
In A Baseball Gaijin: Chasing a Dream to Japan and Back (Sports Publishing, 2024), Aaron Fischman tells Tony's story of perseverance, determination, and never giving up on your dream.
Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book, The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All was published in 2020. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep.
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Discover everything you’ve ever wondered about the legendary spirits, creatures, and figures of Japanese folklore including how they have found their way into every corner of our pop culture from the creator of the podcast Uncanny Japan.
Welcome to The Book of Japanese Folklore: An Encyclopedia of the Spirits, Monsters, and Yokai of Japanese Myth (Adams Media, 2024): a fascinating journey through Japan’s folklore through profiles of the legendary creatures and beings who continue to live on in pop culture today.
From the sly kitsune to the orgrish oni and mischievous shape-shifting tanuki, learn all about the origins of these fantastical and mythical creatures. This gorgeous package is complete with stained edges and stunning four-color illustrations. With information on their cultural significance, a retelling of a popular tale tied to that particular yokai, and how it’s been spun into today’s popular culture, this handsome tome teaches you about the stories and histories of the beings that inspired characters in your favorite movies, animes, manga, and games.
Thersa Matsuura is an American expat who has lived in Japan for over thirty years. Her fluency in the language allows her to explore her favorite part of Japanese culture: all the myths, legends, folktales, and superstitions. Thersa retells these Japanese folktales and ghost stories on her popular podcast Uncanny Japan. Thersa has also published two short story collections, including A Robe of Feathers and Other Stories and The Carp-Faced Boy and Other Tales, a collection of horror stories inspired by Japanese folktakes, which was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award in 2017.
Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter.
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In December 1948, a panel of 12 judges sentenced 23 Japanese officials for war crimes. Seven, including former Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, were sentenced to death. The sentencing ended the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, an over-two-year-long trial over Imperial Japan’s atrocities in China and its decision to attack the U.S.
But unlike the trials at Nuremberg, now seen as one of the touchstones of modern international law, the trials at Tokyo were a messy affair. The ruling wasn’t unanimous, with two judges dissenting. Indian judge Radhabinod Pal even chose to acquit everybody. The judges couldn’t agree on anything, the prosecution made significant mistakes, and the defense constantly complained about not having enough time and resources.
Gary Bass tells the entire story of the trials at Tokyo—from their formulation at the end of a long World War by a triumphant yet weary U.S., to the eventual decision to let many sentenced defendants out on parole as Japan became a close Cold War ally of Washington—in his book Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia (Knopf: 2023)
Gary Bass is also the author of The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissenger and a Forgotten Genocide (Vintage: 2014), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction and won the Arthur Ross Book Award from the Council on Foreign Relations, among other awards. He is the William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and War at Princeton University. His previous books are Freedom's Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group: 2008) and Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals (Princeton University Press: 2002). A former reporter for The Economist, Bass writes often for The New York Times and has written for The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and other publications.
You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books. Including its review of Judgment at Tokyo. 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.
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The Handbook of Modern and Contemporary Japanese Women Writers (MHM Limited and Amsterdam University Press, 2022) offers a comprehensive overview of women writers in Japan, from the late 19th century to the early 21st. Featuring 24 newly written contributions from scholars in the field—representing expertise from North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia—the Handbook introduces and analyzes works by modern and contemporary women writers that coalesce loosely around common themes, tropes, and genres. Putting writers from different generations in conversation with one another reveals the diverse ways they have responded to similar subjects. Whereas women writers may have shared concerns—the pressure to conform to gendered expectation, the tension between family responsibility and individual interests, the quest for self-affirmation—each writer invents her own approach. As readers will see, we have writers who turn to memoir and autobiography, while others prefer to imagine fabulous fictional worlds. Some engage with the literary classics—whether Japanese, Chinese, or European—and invest their works with rich intertextual allusions. Other writers grapple with colonialism, militarism, nationalism, and industrialization. This Handbook builds a foundation which invites readers to launch their own investigations into women’s writing in Japan.
Professor Rebecca Copeland is a professor of Japanese literature at Washington University in St. Louis. Professor Copeland’s research and teaching interests include modern and contemporary women’s writing in Japan, modern literature and material culture, and translation studies. She is the author of The Sound of the Wind: The Life and Works of Uno Chiyo (1992) and Lost Leaves: Women Writers of Meiji Japan (2000), the latter of which was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2001. She is the editor of Woman Critiqued: Translated Essays on Japanese Women's Writing (2006) and co-editor of The Father-Daughter Plot: Japanese Literary Women and the Law of the Father (2001) and Modern Murasaki: Writing by Women of Meiji Japan (2006), and Diva Nation: Female Icons from Japanese Cultural History (2018). Professor Copeland also translates one of the most well-known Japanese woman writer, Kirino Natsuo’s Grotesque (2007) and Joshinki (The Goddess Chronicles, 2012). The Goddess Chronicles won the 2014-15 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. Professor Copeland is also a creative writer and her debut novel, The Kimono Tattoo, was published in 2021.
Linshan Jiang is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University. She received her Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she also obtained a Ph.D. emphasis in Translation Studies. Her research interests include modern and contemporary literature, film, and popular culture in mainland China, Taiwan, and Japan; trauma and memory studies; gender and sexuality studies; queer studies; as well as comparative literature and translation studies. Her primary research project focuses on female writers’ war experiences and memories of the Asia-Pacific War, entitled Women Writing War Memories. Her second research project explores how queerness is performed in Sinophone queer cultural productions. She has published articles about gender studies and queer studies in literature and culture as well as translations of scholarly and popular works in Chinese and English. She has been making a podcast named Gleaners with her friends for more than ten years and she is also a host of the East Asian Studies channel for the New Books Network.
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In December 1937, Bernhard Sindberg arrives at a cement factory outside of Nanjing. He’s one of just two foreigners, and he gets there just weeks before the Japanese invade and commit the now infamous atrocities in the Chinese city.
As the writer Peter Harmsen notes, Bernhard’s background isn’t particularly compelling: He’s bounced from job to job, and is known for butting heads with his colleagues and superiors. But as Harmsen explains in his book Bernhard Sindberg: The Schindler of Nanjing (Casemate: 2024), the Danish man ends up doing something extraordinary: Setting up a refugee camp and using every ounce of political capital and sheer bullheadedness to protect tens of thousands of Chinese trying to escape the fighting.
In this interview, Peter and I talk about Bernhard, his less-than-illustrious path to China, and what his deeds in Nanjing tell us about the nature of heroism.
Peter Harmsen is the author of Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze (Casemate: 2015) and Nanjing 1937: Battle for a Doomed City (Casemate: 2015), as well as the War in the Far East trilogy. He studied history at National Taiwan University and has been a foreign correspondent in East Asia for more than two decades.
You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Bernhard Sindberg. 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.
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In 1941 and 1942 the British and Indian Armies were brutally defeated and Japan reigned supreme in its newly conquered territories throughout Asia. But change was coming. New commanders were appointed, significant training together with restructuring took place, and new tactics were developed. 
A War of Empires: Japan, India, Burma, and Britain: 1941–45 (Osprey, 2021) by acclaimed historian Robert Lyman expertly records these coordinated efforts and describes how a new volunteer Indian Army, rising from the ashes of defeat, would ferociously fight to turn the tide of war.
But victory did not come immediately. It wasn't until March 1944, when the Japanese staged their famed 'March on Delhi', that the years of rebuilding paid off and, after bitter fighting, the Japanese were finally defeated at Kohima and Imphal. This was followed by a series of extraordinary victories culminating in Mandalay in May 1945 and the collapse of all Japanese forces in Burma. Until now, the Indian Army's contribution has been consistently forgotten and ignored by many Western historians but Robert Lyman proves how vital this hard-fought campaign was in securing Allied victory in the east. Detailing the defeat of Japanese militarism, he recounts how the map of the region was ultimately redrawn, guaranteeing the rise of an independent India free from the shackles of empire.
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