New Books in Japanese Studies

Marshall Poe
  • 4.6 (9)
  • BOOKS
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

  1. 2D AGO

    Reginald Jackson, “Textures of Mourning: Calligraphy, Mortality, and The Tale of Genji Scrolls” (U Michigan Press, 2018)

    Reginald Jackson’s inspiring new book takes a transdisciplinary approach to rethinking how we read, how we pay attention, and why that matters deeply in shaping how we understand the past, live in the present, and imagine possible futures. Textures of Mourning: Calligraphy, Mortality, and The Tale of Genji Scrolls (University of Michigan Press, 2018) explores the relationship between reading, dying, and mourning across three central texts: the Heian period The Tale of Genji; the twelfth century Illustrated Handscrolls of the Tale of Genji (or, Genji Scrolls); and the twenty-first century Resurrected Genji Scrolls exhibition. The book’s analysis pivots on some key questions, including: “How does the desire to observe dying bodies potentially damage them?”; and “how do these deteriorating bodies in turn alter the texture of linguistic and visual representation?” The book addresses these questions while helping readers understand and appreciate calligraphy as a “kinetic medium” through which we might “chart the shifting contours of mortality’s link to legibility between terrains of written text and painted image.” In tracing Genji’s decompositional aesthetics across the four major parts of the book – Dying, Decomposing, Mourning, Resurrecting – Jackson’s writing simultaneously helps us to understand how mourning can itself be a kind of reading (and how “dwelling with the dead” can be a critical practice) at the same time that his writing becomes itself a form of mourning. As he reminds us in the book, mourning is not simply about experiencing loss: it can also be a resource for thriving. Textures of Mourning demonstrates what that might look like both when studying the medieval past, and when using it as a resource to inform the contemporary present and its many forms of violence. Ranging across art history, Japanese studies, and performance studies, this is a movingly and gorgeously composed book that should serve as a model for what transdisciplinary scholarship can be, and a reminder of the importance of performing and supporting more work that dances across disciplinary boundaries. Carla Nappi is the Andrew W. Mellon Chair in the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh. You can learn more about her and her work here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

    1h 21m

  2. FEB 23

    Subodhana Wijeyeratne, "The Islands and the Stars: A History of Japan's Space Programs" (Stanford UP, 2026)

    The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is among the six largest national space agencies in the world, along with China's CNSA, US's NASA, and Russia's Roscosmos. JAXA's budget is more than $1 billion USD—bigger than France or Germany individually, and more than that of Italy, India, Canada, and the UK combined. And yet, Japan's significant contributions have largely been absent in the history of space exploration, and space exploration largely absent in the history of technology in Japan. The Islands and the Stars: A History of Japan’s Space Programs (Stanford University Press, 2026) corrects this conspicuous oversight. Through meticulous archival research in Japanese and anglophone archives, Dr. Subodhana Wijeyeratne examines the history of Japan's space exploration efforts over nearly a century. Dr. Wijeyeratne traces the evolution of Japan's space program from its early origins in the 1920s, through the postwar period of rapid technological innovation, to the consolidation of its various institutional elements into JAXA in 2003. He situates Japan's space programs within the broader history of the country's postwar recovery, economic growth, and cultural identity, while also considering their place within global trends in space exploration. Through this narrative, Wijeyeratne not only illuminates Japan's centrality to the global history of science and technology, but also offers insights into the future of global space exploration, emphasizing the importance of diverse voices and perspectives in the quest to understand our place in the cosmos. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

    49 min

  3. FEB 21

    Jie-Hyun Lim, "Victimhood Nationalism: History and Memory in a Global Age" (Columbia UP, 2025)

    Nationalism today depends on the perception of victimhood. The historical memory of past suffering endows nationalist movements with political legitimacy and a sense of moral superiority. Koreans recall Japanese colonial atrocities, while Japan commemorates the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Israel sanctifies the Holocaust and Poland trumpets the Nazi and Soviet occupations. Even Germany and Russia, perpetrators of historical crimes, today cast themselves as victims by pointing to national suffering. In this theoretically sophisticated and empirically rich book, Jie-Hyun Lim offers a new way to understand nationalism and its political instrumentalization of suffering, developing the concept of “victimhood nationalism” and exploring it in a range of global settings. Victimhood Nationalism: History and Memory in a Global Age (Columbia UP, 2025) examines relations among Poland, Germany, Israel, Korea, and Japan, focusing on how memories of colonialism, the Holocaust, and Stalinist terror have converged and intertwined in transnational spaces. With an emphasis on memory formation, Lim scrutinizes how perpetrators in Germany and Japan transformed themselves into victims, as well as how nationalists in Poland, Korea, and Israel portray themselves as hereditary victims in order to rebut external criticism. He considers the construction of nations as victims and perpetrators, tracing the interaction of history and memory. Ultimately, the book contends, challenging victimhood nationalism is necessary to overcome the endless competition over national suffering and instead promote reconciliation, mutual understanding, and transnational solidarity. Dr. Jie-Hyun Lim is the CIPSH Chairholder of Global Easts, Distinguished Professor, and founding director of the Critical Global Studies Institute at Sogang University. In 2025–2026, he is the Class of 1955 Visiting Professor in Global Studies at Williams College. His many books include Global Easts: Remembering, Imagining, Mobilizing (Columbia, 2022). Visit the Critical Global Studies Institute’s homepage: here Buy Victimhood Nationalism: History and Memory in a Global Age: here About the host: Leslie Hickman is an Anthropology graduate student at Emory University. She has an MA in Korean Studies and a KO-EN translation certificate from the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. You can contact her at leslie.hickman@emory.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

    54 min

  4. FEB 18

    David M. Henkin, "Out of the Ballpark: How to Think about Baseball" (Oxford UP, 2026)

    All over the world, masses of people watch, follow, document, and obsess over baseball. Everything remarkable about the impact of baseball derives from the game's history and cultural status as events that draw people together in these ways. Understanding baseball as a cultural phenomenon is therefore less a matter of mastering the vocabulary of the game or merely recollecting its iconic stadiums, players, and stats. While all those details compel insiders and inspire fans, baseball's peculiar and persistent appeal can only be understood by adopting a wider lens. It requires reckoning with the history of structured competition. The classic backyard game of catch between a father and son draws meaning from its associations with the organized sport and its history. The challenge lies less in finding one perfect spot to look, but rather in identifying the many different places where baseball has accumulated significance. Out of the Ballpark: How to Think about Baseball (Oxford University Press, 2026) reconsiders the character, meaning, and delights of the game by exploring both baseball's unusual features and the sport's many resonances with other aspects of modern life. To this end, it abandons several assumptions and mythologies that underlie most approaches to histories of baseball: that it is unique among sports and fundamentally different from other kinds of entertainment; that it is specific to the United States; that it has changed fundamentally in recent years; and that the keys to understanding it lie primarily in examining what happens on the field of play. Instead, David M. Henkin moves across time and space to examine baseball's history since the nineteenth century and beyond US borders. He takes readers inside the structures of clubs and leagues, interprets the sacred scripture of rulebooks, and illuminates some of baseball's rites and rituals that are often associated with honor and manhood. He charts baseball's significance along the routes of American and Japanese imperial expansion and the shifting maps of race and ethnicity in the US. Baseball is found at negotiating tables that pit capital against labor and in pivotal moments in the history of mass media. Here, we are shown how baseball might offer a complex and capacious space for thinking about such things as spectatorship, success, community, order, and contingency in the modern world. David M. Henkin is Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught courses on society and culture in nineteenth-century America for close to three decades. Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

    1h 3m

  5. FEB 10

    Kristin Roebuck, "Japan Reborn: Race and Eugenics from Empire to Cold War" (Columbia UP, 2025)

    In her book Japan Reborn: Race and Eugenics from Empire to Cold War (Columbia UP, 2025), historian Kristin Roebuck grapples with the question: Why did Japan embrace “mixed blood” as an authoritarian empire yet turn to xenophobic racial nationalism as a Cold War democracy? Through in-depth and rigorous historical archival research, Roebuck traces the fraught history of sex, reproduction, race and empire building in Japan from the 1930s to 1950s. Through her scholarship, she crucially demonstrates how discourses on sex, mixed-race children, and adoption revolved around control of women and their bodies to strengthen nationalism and imperialism. This monograph is an important read for listeners who are interested in the topics of race, gender and empire and scholars in Asian Studies, History, and Gender Studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

    59 min

  6. FEB 7

    Rosina Buckland and Oleg Benesch, "Samurai" (British Museum, 2025)

    Samurai (British Museum Press 2026) is a richly illustrated volume co-authored by exhibition curator Rosina Buckland (British Museum) and Oleg Benesch (York) to accompany the special exhibition "Samurai" at the British Museum 3 Feb - 4 May 2026. More than a catalogue, Samurai uses the exhibit to explore the overlapping and diverging myths and histories of the samurai from medieval warriors to bureaucrats to global pop culture phenomena. As the exhibition website observes, "The samurai is an iconic figure, evoking images of formidable fighters possessing ideals of courage, honour and self-sacrifice. Yet much of what we think we know about samurai is invented tradition." Samurai is the kind of book that epitomizes how rigorous academic work can be transformed into effective public communication. The museum encourages listeners, readers, and guests of the exhibit to explore more of the collection here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

    1h 12m

  7. JAN 21

    Alex Wellerstein, "The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age" (Harper, 2025)

    Dropping the atomic bombs on Japan during World War II was, arguably, the most controversial decision of the 20th century. The responsibility for that “decision” has logically fallen on US President Harry S. Truman. But in The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age (Harper, 2025), Alex Wellerstein argues that Truman's actual decision wasn’t what everyone thinks it was. The conventional narrative is that American leaders had a choice: Invade Japan, which would have cost millions of Allied and Japanese lives, or instead, use the atom bomb in the hope of convincing Japan to surrender. Truman, the story goes, carefully weighed the pros and cons before deciding that the atomic bomb would be used against Japanese cities, as the lesser of two evils. But nuclear historian Alex Wellerstein argues that is not what happened. Not only did Truman not take part in the decision to use the bomb, but the one major decision that he did make was a very different one — one that he himself did not fully understand until after the atomic bomb was used. The weight of that decision, and that misunderstanding, became the major reason that atomic bombs have not been used again since World War II. Based on a close reading of the historical record, The Most Awful Responsibility shows that, despite his reputation as an ardent defender of the atomic bomb, Truman: Wanted to avoid the “murder” and “slaughter” of innocent civilians Believed that the atomic bomb should never be used again Hoped that nuclear weapons would be outlawed in his lifetime Wellerstein makes a startling case that Truman was possibly the most anti-nuclear American president of the twentieth century, but his ambitions were strongly constrained by the domestic and international politics of the postwar world and the early Cold War. This book is a must-read for all who want to truly understand not only why the bomb was dropped on Japan but also why it has not been used since. Dr. Andrew O. Pace is a historian of the US in the world who specializes in the fog of war. He is currently a DPAA Research Partner Fellow at the University of Southern Mississippi and a co-host of the Diplomatic History Channel on the New Books Network. He is also working on his first book which examines why the United States pursued victory at practically all costs during World War II. He can be reached at andrew.pace@usm.edu or here. Andrew is not an employee of DPAA, he supports DPAA through a partnership. The views presented are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of DPAA, DoD or its components.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

    1h 4m

  8. JAN 20

    Anne Sokolsky ed., "Bold Breaks: Japanese Women and Literary Narratives of Divorce" (U Hawaii Press, 2025)

    The various words for “divorce” in Japanese—rien, enkiri, fūfu wakare, rikon—reflect how the socially constructed institutions of marriage and family, along with their dissolutions, have been understood in Japanese history and jurisprudence. Employing a broad definition of divorce as the end of a romantic union sanctioned by law, social custom, or mutual agreement, Bold Breaks: Japanese Women and Literary Narratives of Divorce explores the shifting attitudes toward divorce in literature by women from the Heian (794–1185) to Heisei (1989–2019) periods. The collection features writing by renowned authors Tamura Toshiko (1884–1945), Uno Chiyo (1897–1996), and Tsushima Yūko (1947–2016), who used divorce as a literary device to enable their female protagonists to take bold steps toward new lives. A coda explores more contemporary views on marriage, divorce, and romantic love in the work of novelists Itoyama Akiko (1966–) and Kawakami Mieko (1976–) and poet Saihate Tahi (1986–). A wide-ranging introduction provides an overview of the historical, legal, and literary significance of divorce in Japan. The translated texts, appearing in English for the first time, are accompanied by essays introducing the authors and offering brief analyses. Bold Breaks will appeal to students and scholars of Japanese literature and culture, particularly those interested in gender issues and family social practices, and will enrich the growing conversation on marriage and divorce across cultures and eras. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

    1h 3m
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Ratings & Reviews

4.6
out of 5
9 Ratings

About

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

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