New Books in East Asian Studies

Marshall Poe
  • 4.5 (58)
  • Society & Culture
  • 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/east-asian-studies

  1. 1d ago

    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/east-asian-studies

    1h 2m

  2. 4d ago

    Gregory Smits, "The Ryukyu Islands: A New History from the Stone Age to the Present" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

    Most people only know one of the Ryukyu Islands: the island of Okinawa, home to sandy beaches and one of the U.S.’s most important bases in Asia. There are lots of myths about this island chain, which stretch from southern Japan down to the island of Taiwan: That it owed loyalty to China, given its place in the imperial tribute trade; that it was a pacifist kingdom; that it was quasi-sovereign even within Japan. Gregory Smits tackles a lot of these myths in his expansive history of the islands, titled The Ryukyu Islands: A New History from the Stone Age to the Present (University of Chicago Press: 2025). His book, and today’s conversation, dives into all the ways that the Ryukyu Islands will frustrate anyone trying to fit this place into an easy historical or political narrative.  Gregory Smits is professor of history and Asian Studies at Penn State University. He is the author of several books, including Early Ryukyuan History: A New Mode (University of Hawaii Press: 2024), Maritime Ryukyu, 1050-1650 (University of Hawaii Press: 2019) and Visions of Ryukyu: Identity and Ideology in Early-Modern Thought and Politics (University of Hawaii Press: 1999) You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Ryukyu Islands. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

    1h 16m

  3. Jul 3

    Xian Aubin Wang, "Islam and Maoism in Southern Yunnan: State Violence and Resistance, 1949–2024" (Cornell UP, 2026)

    Islam and Maoism in Southern Yunnan: State Violence and Resistance, 1949–2024 (Cornell University Press, 2026) by Dr. Xian Aubin Wang investigates decades of contentious relations between the Communist party-state of China and the Muslim community of southern Yunnan centered on the village of Shadian, site of an incident of state violence in 1975 that resulted in 1600 civilian deaths. Examining the causes and legacies of the Shadian massacre, Dr. Wang draws on an extensive review of internal official documents, original written testimonies, and firsthand interviews with Muslim villagers. By exploring interactions among Beijing, the Yunnan provincial government, county officials, CCP Muslim cadres, and Shadian villagers against the backdrop of the CCP's nationwide political campaigns since the early 1950s, Dr. Wang shows how Islam and Maoism influenced the ways that local villagers and party cadres saw and dealt with each other—and how these encounters shaped the developing conflict and its aftermath. Providing an in-depth account of Chinese religious groups living under the CCP, Islam and Maoism in Southern Yunnan reveals how religion and politics shaped Muslim villagers' responses to the party-state's efforts to control and secularize them. 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/east-asian-studies

    1h 3m

  4. Jun 27

    Fabio Lanza, "Urban Revolution: People's Communes in Beijing" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

    During the Great Leap Forward (1958-62), the collectivization of the Chinese countryside had catastrophic results, but how did this short-lived political experiment reshape urban life? In his new book, Urban Revolution: People's Communes in Beijing (Cambridge UP, 2026), Fabio Lanza examines the most radical attempts to remake cities under Mao. This first full-length history in English of China's urban communes shows how universalization of production, the collectivization of life, including communal canteens and nurseries, and women's liberation, were intended to transform modern urban life along socialist lines. Urban Revolution writes a new history of the socialist everyday by showing how urban residents, and women in particular, struggled to enact a radical change in their lives. Lanza argues that this transformation of everyday life must be taken seriously, but that ultimately the failure of urban collectivization reveals the most crucial contradictions of the socialist revolution. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

    1h 3m

  5. Jun 26

    Benjamin J. Nourse, "The Power of Publishing in Early Modern Tibetan Buddhism"(Lexington Books, 2025)

    The Power of Publishing in Early Modern Tibetan Buddhism (Lexington Books, 2025) is a rich exploration of the history of Tibetan books during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Looking at this ‘golden age’ of book production, Benjamin Nourse focuses on two core topics: What was driving Tibetan publishing in the eighteenth century, and what happened as a result of that growth? How should we understand Tibetan Buddhist ideas and practices related to religious books? Through individual chapters on publishing in Lhasa, Qing Beijing, Derge, Chone, and Labrang, Nourse shows how Tibetan books operated simultaneously as religious objects, political tools, and markers of cultural authority. Across each, we see books being used in different ways: as a way of cementing the authority of the Fifth Dalai Lama, as part of Beijing’s emergence as a major center for Tibetan Buddhist publishing, and as objects that people engaged with through reading, chanting, translation, and ritual practice. This book should naturally appeal to those interested in Tibetan Buddhism, religion, and early modern Asia — but it is also a valuable contribution to book history, print culture, and the study of how the production of books can shape political authority and religious practice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

    1h 14m

  6. Jun 25

    Xiaobing Li, "China’s Mahan: Admiral Liu Huaqing and the Rise of the Modern Chinese Navy (Naval Institute Press, 2026)

    In 2012, China debuted its first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, a refurbished Soviet-era ship from Ukraine. The debut of the Liaoning was largely thanks to a longtime pressure campaign by Liu Huaqing, the onetime leader of the People’s Liberation Army Navy and the man responsible for transforming China’s naval strategy. (China now has three carriers, and is building a fourth). When Liu began his career, China saw its military victories as coming primarily via land warfare; Liu, over decades, forced China to take naval combat seriously. Xiaobing Li writes about Liu’s life in his book China’s Mahan: Admiral Liu Huaqing and the Rise of the Modern Chinese Navy (Naval Institute Press, 2026), from his early career in the aftermath of the Chinese Civil War and finishing with his long push to start China’s aircraft carrier program. Xiaobing Li, professor of history and Don Betz Endowed Chair in International Studies at the University of Central Oklahoma, is the author of The Dragon in the Jungle, Attack at Chosin, Building Ho’s Army, History of Taiwan, and The Cold War in East Asia. He is the executive editor of the Chinese Historical Review. Li served in the PLA in China. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

    34 min

  7. Jun 24

    Infrastructure, Nickel, and the Politics of Polyalignment in Indonesia

    Indonesia is often framed as a key arena of China-Japan-US competition in the Second Cold War. In this episode, we talk with Trissia Wijaya about her book on the political economy of Chinese and Japanese infrastructure financing in Indonesia. She challenges the view that it is simply an instrument of competition and instead situates infrastructure finance within Indonesia’s own development strategies. She shows how development assistance, commercial loans, export credits, and public-private partnerships are shaped by contestation among Chinese and Japanese capital, as well as Indonesian civil society, state actors, and labor. We also link these dynamics to the country’s changing industrial policy, from energy infrastructure to Nickel processing to the planned capital of Nusantara, asking how Indonesia uses strategies of polyalignment and foreign finance to pursue its own developmental ambitions. — Trissia Wijaya is a McKenzie Research Fellow at the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne. Prior to this role, she worked as a Senior Research Fellow at Asia-Japan Research Organization, Ritsumeikan University, and taught at the College of Global Liberal Arts. She received her PhD in Politics from Murdoch University, Australia, and remains affiliated as an Honorary Research Fellow at the Indo-Pacific Research Centre there. She has also worked at the Asian Development Bank and UNDP Indonesia, cultivating an interest in the political economy of development and evidence-informed policymaking. Her research spans green infrastructure financing, industrial policy, and critical mineral development. She has conducted intensive fieldwork across Indonesia, Japan, and China. The Political Economy of Japanese and Chinese Infrastructure Financing Governance: Organizing Alliances, Institutions, and Ideology (Bristol University Press 2025) Indonesia, nickel, and the political economy of polyalignment in the Second Cold War in Third World Quarterly An EV-fix for Indonesia: the green development-resource nationalist nexus in Environmental Policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

    43 min

  8. Jun 22

    Olivier Krischer and Shuxia Chen, "Wayfaring: Photography in Taiwan, 1950s-1980s" (Australian Centre on China in the World, 2025)

    Wayfaring: Photography in Taiwan, 1950s–1980s (Australian Centre on China in the World, 2025) explores four transformative decades of photography in Taiwan, tracing its evolution amid the island’s emergence from Japanese colonialism and integration into Nationalist China, largely under martial law (1949–87). Through a dozen richly illustrated essays and interviews, the book bridges the gap between vigorous Chinese-language scholarship on photography in Taiwan and its limited representation in English. Essays on photographers in the 1950s–60s, including Long Chin-San (Lang Jingshan) (1892-1995), Deng Nan-Guang (1907-1971), Chang Chao-Tang (1943-2024), Liu An-Ming (1928-2022), Hwang Pai-Chi (b. 1931), Hsu Yuan-Fu (1932-2018) and Tsai Hui-Feng (1928-2005), reveal photography’s pivotal role in documenting ‘local’ culture and shaping cultural identity, while challenging ideas of ‘amateur’ and ‘realist’ practices and recognising the importance of transnational connections. Meanwhile, essays on Hsu Jen-Shiu (b.1946), Lin Bo-Liang (b. 1952), Kao Chung-Li (b. 1958), Lien Hui-Ling (b. 1961) and Hou Tsung-Hui (b. 1960), along with interviews sharing the firsthand experiences of Liu Chen-Hsiang (b.1963), Lulu Shur-tzy Hou (1962-2023) and Yao Jui-Chung (b.1969), highlight the experience of photography in 1970s–80s Taiwan, as both witness and agent of social transformation, addressing issues such as environmental protection, mental health and gender politics, as well as being a crucial vehicle for the transdisciplinary nature of contemporary art, theatre, cinema and performance in Taiwan at that time. Chen Shuxia is a historian and curator of Chinese art. Her research concerns art collectives, diasporic artistic practice, and reciprocal relations between people and objects. Her most recent books include Wayfaring: Photography in Taiwan, 1950s–1980s (2025), Chinese Toggles: Culture in Miniature (2024) and A Home for Photography Learning: the Friday Salon, 1977-1980 (2024). Her most recent curated exhibitions include “Merchants of Haymarket: the Making of Sydney’s Chinatown” (2026), “The trace is not a presence…” (2025), “Chinese Toggles: Culture in Miniature” (2024). Chen is the inaugural curator of the Chau Chak Wing Museum’s China Gallery, and a Senior lecturer in the Master’s degree programme in Curating and Cultural Leadership, at the University of New South Wales School of Art & Design. Olivier Krischer is a historian and curator of art from East Asia and the Asian Australian diaspora, whose research concerns modern and contemporary transcultural art, photography and intermedia practices. His curatorial projects include “Assembly” (2023), featuring eight Hong Kong-born artists, “Wayfaring: Photography in 1970s-80s Taiwan” (2021) and “Between: Picturing 1950-1960s Taiwan” (2016). His publications include John Young: The History Projects (2025), Zhang Peili: From Painting to Video (2019) and Asia through Art and Anthropology: Cultural Translation Across Borders (with F. Nakamura and M. Perkins, 2013). Krischer is currently a lecturer and program convenor for the Master’s degree programe in Curating and Cultural Leadership, at the University of New South Wales School of Art & Design. Li-Ping Chen is a visiting scholar in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include literary translingualism, diaspora, and nativism in Sinophone, inter-Asian, and transpacific contexts. Li-Ping’s NBN episodes on Taiwan Studies are supported by the Chun and Jane Chiu Family Foundation Taiwan Studies Program at Oregon State University. Relevant Links: Open Access for Wayfaring: Photography in Taiwan 1950s−1980s Wayfaring 找路: Photography in 1970s–80s Taiwan Exhibition Webpage Wayfaring Exhibition Pamphlet Wayfaring Exhibition Video Tour | Part 1 — Overview “Between: Picturing 1950s-60s Taiwan / 間：臺灣五六十年代面影” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

    1h 39m
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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/east-asian-studies

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