New Books in Japanese Studies

Marshall Poe
  • 4.6 (11)
  • 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. Aug 19

    WE HEREBY REFUSE: Japanese American Resistance to Wartime Incarceration with Bruce Rutledge

    John talks to Bruce Rutledge, founder of Chin Music Press, about running an independent Asia-focused press, the origins of the company in Tokyo, and the move to Seattle, where Chin Music now has a bookstore in Pike Place Market. They talk about Chin Music’s highly successful graphic novel trilogy on the Japanese American incarceration experience during World War II. The wide-ranging conversation is an honest celebration of the challenges and pleasures of independent publishing. Chin Music Press books mentioned in the episode include: Their very first book, an anthology called Kuhaku, published in 2005. Goodbye Madame Butterfly: Sex, Marriage and the Modern Japanese Woman by Sumie Kawakami (2007/2010) Japan’s Urushi Craftsmen: Can Old World Artistry Survive in the 21st Century by Bruce Rutledge (2020) When the Waves Came by Michael Larson (2020) WE HEREBY REFUSE : Japanese American Resistance to Wartime Incarceration by authors Frank Abe and Tamiko Nimura and illustrators Ross Ishikawa and Matt Sasaki (2021). Fighting for America: Nisei Soldiers by Lawrence Matsuda (Author) and Matt Sasaki (Artist) Those Who Helped Us: Assisting Japanese Americans During the War by Ken Mochizuki (Author) and Kiku Hughes (Illustrator) Seattle Samurai: A Cartoonist’s Perspective of the Japanese American Experience by Kelly Goto (Author) and Sam Goto (Drawings) The Books on Asia Podcast is co-produced with Plum Rain Press. Subscribe to the BOA podcast from your favorite podcast service. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

  2. Aug 16

    Echoes of Incense on the Shikoku Pilgrimage with Don Weiss

    Amy Chavez talks to Don Weiss, currently mid-way through the Shikoku Pilgrimage — Japan's 1,300 km Buddhist route that has been walked for almost as many years. Pilgrims share their journey with Kobo Daishi, patron saint of the 88-temple circuit and founder of Shingon Buddhism in Japan. Don explains his "gratitude pilgrimage," what it means and why he is undertaking it. Along the way, he speaks with fellow pilgrims and priests at a number of temples to assess the experience for international visitors. While the 88-temple route faces challenges — from local depopulation to overtourism — Don finds common ground in conversations with priests about how overseas visitors might help keep the tradition alive, and what temples can do in turn to make the route more welcoming to those coming from abroad. Don's book Echoes of Incense, about his first trip around the ancient pilgrimage route decades ago, is available as an e-book on Amazon in English and Japanese. You can follow Don on his gratitude pilgrimage via his You Tube Channel: Just Walk The Books on Asia Podcast is co-produced with Plum Rain Press . Podcast host Amy Chavez is author of The Widow, the Priest, and the Octopus Hunter: Discovering a Lost Way of Life on a Secluded Japanese Island, and Amy's Guide to Best Behavior in Japan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

  3. Aug 16

    Mithi Mukherjee, "Asianism and the Fall of Empire: India's Road to Freedom" (U California Press, 2026)

    Offering a new global perspective on modern Indian history, Asianism and the Fall of Empire: India's Road to Freedom (University of California Press, 2026) by Mithi Mukherjee identifies the rise of Asianism in the early twentieth century as the origin and primary driving force of resistance movements that brought down the British Empire. Mithi Mukherjee ties together into a single sweeping narrative two contrasting, conflicting forms of anticolonialism: the emergence of the nonviolent resistance movement under Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa and the militant movement culminating in the war on British India by the Indian National Army under Subhas Chandra Bose in alliance with the Japanese army. Asia emerges in this breakthrough retelling not as an inert geographical category, but instead as a singular agent of change in modern world history. Mithi Mukherjee is a Professor of History at the University of Colorado Boulder. She specializes in the legal, political, and cultural history of modern India. Shatrunjay Mall is a Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. His work in modern Japanese history, South Asian history, and transnational Asian history explores ideas of Pan-Asianism and its legacies, as well as intellectual, political, and cultural intersections and affinities between colonial India and imperial Japan in the twentieth century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

  4. Aug 10

    Marco Pompili, "Public Housing in Japan: The Dōjunkai Apartments One Hundred Years On" (Brill, 2026)

    Public Housing in Japan: The Dōjunkai Apartments One Hundred Years On (Brill, 2026) is the first comprehensive English-language examination of the Dōjunkai Foundation (1924-2024). Compiled and edited by Dr. Marco Pompili through interviews and studies, it is a must-read for anyone interested in modern Japanese architecture. The Dōjunkai Apartments (1924-1934), the Foundation's best-known work, introduced apartment living to Japan in response to crucial historical and social challenges such as urban reconstruction after the devastating earthquake of 1923 and the emergence of new working and middle classes. The book's texts, by prominent scholars and architects, as well as a series of original drawings and photographs from the period, bring the work of the Dōjunkai Foundation back to life 100 years after its founding. While the Dōjunkai Apartments have unfortunately been lost in the rapid changes and greedy redevelopment typical of Japanese metropolises, this book seeks to contribute to the preservation of their memory and their significance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

  5. Aug 8

    Hiroshima's Last Witnesses and Japan's Nuclear Future

    M. G. Sheftall has lived in Japan since 1987. He has a PhD in international relations and modern Japanese history from Waseda University in Tokyo. Since 2001, he has been a professor of modern Japanese cultural history and communication at the Faculty of Informatics of Shizuoka University. He lives in Hamamatsu, Japan. Amy Chavez talks about Sheftall's books on the Asia Pacific War, in particular Hiroshima: The Last Witnesses and Nagasaki: The Last Witnesses both oral histories featuring interviews with survivors of the atomic bombs. Has Japan's 80 years of peace education been all for naught? The book serves as a prescient warning given the current political climate and Japan's complex relationships with the US, Taiwan, China, and the broader world. Recent developments—including Nihon Hidankyo's 2024 Nobel Peace Prize and the ongoing protests against revising Article 9—bring this subject into sharp focus. Against this backdrop, the author offers his own perspective on Japan's nuclear future. The Books on Asia Podcast is co-produced with Plum Rain Press. Podcast host Amy Chavez is author of The Widow, the Priest, and the Octopus Hunter: Discovering a Lost Way of Life on a Secluded Japanese Island, and Amy's Guide to Best Behavior in Japan. Subscribe to the BOA podcast from your favorite podcast service. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

  6. Aug 4

    Nozomi Naoi, "The Land of Happiness: How the Japanese Department Store Visualized Modern Life" (MIT Press, 2026)

    The Land of Happiness: How the Japanese Department Store Visualized Modern Life (MIT Press, 2026) explores the far-reaching influence of the Japanese department store on modern life and our imaginations. In this gorgeously illustrated volume, Dr. Nozomi Naoi explains how Japanese department stores modeled “the new modern Japanese life and identity” through print media and design, physical and imagined space, and the new experiences that these spaces offered. The stores created the notion of a modern subject enjoying a “land of happiness”—and this, in turn, shaped the wider sociological context, including emerging roles for women and perceptions of coloniality. The book focuses on three areas: the mediascape of proliferating department store posters, advertisements, commercial design, promotional magazines, and merchandise; the physical space, such as the Western-style architecture that characterized many of these early department stores, and the imagined “modern space” created within their walls; and, finally, the production of a novel “dreamworld,” which included dining spaces with children’s menus, new technology such as elevators and escalators, and more. Although the research on department stores and their role in the quotidian experience is vast, there is nothing like this study, which is uniquely grounded in an art-historical approach that draws on the visual media environment of early twentieth-century Japan and its impact on the everyday. 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

  7. Jul 24

    Ashton Lazarus, "Performing Transgression: Crowds and Bodies in Heian Japan" (Harvard UP, 2026)

    What happens when performance defies social and political boundaries? Performing Transgression: Crowds and Bodies in Heian Japan (Harvard University Press, 2026) offers a new cultural history of non-elite spectacle in Heian Japan (794–1185), uncovering how performances on the margins—boisterous dengaku music and dance, daring sangaku acrobatics, and the infectious lyrics of imayō songs—challenged and fascinated the aristocracy. Ashton Lazarus reveals how these unruly arts were documented by the very elites they unsettled, appearing in historical chronicles, diaries, prose, poetry, and illustrated scrolls. More than mere precursors to later forms like noh and kyōgen, these performances formed a dynamic cultural force with real political impact. By tracing their influence through literary studies, performance studies, and historiography, Lazarus rethinks the interplay between politics, class, and culture in Heian Japan. Performing Transgression illuminates how acts of defiance and creative expression resonate across time, offering fresh insights into the ways performance bridges the vanished past and the present. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

  8. Jul 12

    Stephen G. Covell, "The Teaching and Teachings of Temple Buddhism in Contemporary Japan" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)

    How have Buddhist teachings come to be in modern and contemporary Japan and how are they taught? This pioneering work seeks to answer these questions by highlighting the public teachings of Temple Buddhism institutions, in particular Temple Buddhism kindergartens and Buddhist secondary schools and colleges. The community outreach provided by these Buddhist facilities is far greater than any other with the possible exception of funerals yet until now it has received little attention from scholars of Japanese religion. After determining what is taught in Buddhist education and how, Stephen Covell introduces readers to a select group of monks who undergo some of the most grueling practices in Japanese Temple Buddhism to determine if the public-facing teachings of Buddhist education are unique or similar to those of elite Buddhist practitioners. The teachings and sites of teaching examined here include but are not limited to classical doctrinal studies and temples focused on the education of Buddhist clergy. Covell uncovers the arguments made by priests involved in morals education, the dharma talks of famous ascetics, and the ways in which laws and legal codes have changed Buddhist education. He looks at what is taught on the ground, online, and in popular texts to discuss the current teachings embraced as Buddhism within the institutions of Temple Buddhism. Among his numerous findings is such teachings and worldview are remarkably similar to those of New Religions and Buddhist lay movements as outlined by Japan religion scholars and government bodies in charge of education. The Teaching and Teachings of Temple Buddhism in Contemporary Japan (University of Hawaii Press, 2024) will be welcomed by students and scholars in Japanese religious studies and early childhood and higher education as well as those interested in current Buddhist practice and teachings in general. Dr. Victoria Montrose is the James B. Duke Assistant Professor of Asian Studies and Religion at Furman University. Her recent research, “From Disciples to Dissidents: Student Protests and Reform Movements in Meiji-Era Buddhist Universities” was published in the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies in late 2025. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

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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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