New Books in East Asian Studies

Arise Africa, Roar China: Black and Chinese Citizens of the World in the Twentieth Century (University of North Carolina Press, 2021) explores the close relationships between three of the most famous twentieth-century African Americans, W. E. B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, and Langston Hughes, and their little-known Chinese allies during World War II and the Cold War--journalist, musician, and Christian activist Liu Liangmo, and Sino-Caribbean dancer-choreographer Sylvia Si-lan Chen. Charting a new path in the study of Sino-American relations, Gao Yunxiang foregrounds African Americans, combining the study of Black internationalism and the experiences of Chinese Americans with a transpacific narrative and an understanding of the global remaking of China's modern popular culture and politics. Gao reveals earlier and more widespread interactions between Chinese and African American leftists than accounts of the familiar alliance between the Black radicals and the Maoist Chinese would have us believe. The book's multilingual approach draws from massive yet rarely used archival streams in China and in Chinatowns and elsewhere in the United States. These materials allow Gao to retell the well-known stories of Du Bois, Robeson, and Hughes alongside the sagas of Liu and Chen in a work that will transform and redefine Afro-Asia studies. Hettie V. Williams Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of African American history in the Department of History and Anthropology at Monmouth University where she teaches courses in African American history and U.S. history. 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

In Good Wife, Wise Mother: Educating Han Taiwanese Girls Under Japanese Rule (U Washington Press, 2024), female education and citizenship serve as a lens through which to examine Taiwan's uniqueness as a colonial crossroads between Chinese and Japanese ideas and practices. A latecomer to the age of imperialism, Japan used modernization efforts in Taiwan to cast itself as a benevolent force among its colonial subjects and imperial competitors. In contrast to most European colonies, where only elites received an education, in Taiwan Japan built elementary schools intended for the entire population, including girls. In 1897 it developed a program known as “Good Wife, Wise Mother” that sought to transform Han Taiwanese girls into modern Japanese female citizens. Drawing on Japanese and Chinese newspapers, textbooks, oral interviews, and fiction, Fang Yu Hu illustrates how this seemingly progressive project advanced a particular Japanese vision of modernity, womanhood, and citizenship, to which the colonized Han Taiwanese people responded with varying degrees of collaboration, resistance, adaptation, and adoption. Hu also assesses the program's impact on Taiwan's class structure, male-female interactions, and political identity both during and after the end of Japanese occupation in 1945. Good Wife, Wise Mother expands the study of Taiwanese history by contributing important gendered and nonelite perspectives. It will be of interest to any historian concerned with questions of modernity, hybridity, and colonial nostalgia. Fang Yu Hu is assistant professor of History at the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona who specializes in modern East Asian history, with a focus on Taiwan, gender, colonialism, and cross-border flows. She has published in the journals ERAS of Monash University and Twentieth-Century China. Her current research focuses on Taiwanese migrants to mainland China and Southeast Asia in the first half of the 20th century. 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. Relevant Link: NBN interview for Indoctrinating the Youth: Secondary Education in Wartime China and Postwar Taiwan, 1937-1960 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

Haunted by the past, ordinary Okinawans struggle to live with the unbearable legacies of war, Japanese nationalism, and American imperialism. They are caught up in a web of people and practices--living and dead, visible and immaterial--that exert powerful forces often beyond their control. In When the Bones Speak, Christopher T. Nelson examines the myriad ways contemporary Okinawans experience, remember, and contest sacrifice. He attends to the voices of those who find their vocation in service to others, from shamans, fortune tellers, laborers, and artists to dead soldiers, war survivors, antiwar activists, and Christian missionaries. Nelson shows how the memories of past sacrifices, atrocities, and exploitation as well as residual trauma shape modern life in Okinawa and the possibility and hope for creative action grounded in the everyday. Offering new understandings of colonial transformation, wartime violence, and military occupation, Nelson writes from the intersection of temporalities and possibilities, where the hard finality of the past may be broken open to reveal a "not yet" that has always remained just beyond reach. 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

The extraordinary life story of the billionaire businessman Jimmy Lai, a leading Hong Kong democracy activist fighting for freedom of speech who became China's most famous political prisoner. Jimmy Lai escaped mainland China when he was twelve years old, at the height of a famine that killed tens of millions. In Hong Kong, he hustled and often slept overnight on a table in a clothing factory where he did odd jobs. At twenty-one, he was running a factory. By his mid-twenties, he owned one and was supplying sweaters and shirts to some of the biggest brands in the United States, from Polo to The Limited. His ideas about retail led him to create Giordano in 1981, and with it “fast fashion.” But then came the 1989 democracy spring protests and the June 4th Tiananmen massacre. His reaction to the violence was to enter the media industry to push China toward more freedoms. He started a magazine, Next, to advocate for democracy in Hong Kong. Then, just two years before the city was to return to Chinese control, he founded the Apple Daily newspaper. Its mix of bold graphics, gossip, local news, and opposition to the Chinese Communist Party was an immediate hit. For more than two decades, Lai used Appleand Next as part of a personal push for democracy. A draconian new security law came into effect in Hong Kong in mid-2020, effectively making human rights advocacy and free speech a crime and censorship a fact. Lai was arrested and held without bail before being convicted on trumped-up charges. At the end of 2023, a lengthy national security trial, that could see him jailed for life, alleged “collusion with foreign forces” and printing seditious materials. China's most famous political prisoner has been held in solitary confinement since December 2020, while his supporters and family continue the fight to have him freed. Mark L. Clifford, former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post and the Standard and President of The Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, draws on his three-decade friendship with Lai to tell the inside story of Lai's activism and his bravery in standing up to 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

The extraordinary life story of the billionaire businessman Jimmy Lai, a leading Hong Kong democracy activist fighting for freedom of speech who became China's most famous political prisoner. Jimmy Lai escaped mainland China when he was twelve years old, at the height of a famine that killed tens of millions. In Hong Kong, he hustled and often slept overnight on a table in a clothing factory where he did odd jobs. At twenty-one, he was running a factory. By his mid-twenties, he owned one and was supplying sweaters and shirts to some of the biggest brands in the United States, from Polo to The Limited. His ideas about retail led him to create Giordano in 1981, and with it “fast fashion.” But then came the 1989 democracy spring protests and the June 4th Tiananmen massacre. His reaction to the violence was to enter the media industry to push China toward more freedoms. He started a magazine, Next, to advocate for democracy in Hong Kong. Then, just two years before the city was to return to Chinese control, he founded the Apple Daily newspaper. Its mix of bold graphics, gossip, local news, and opposition to the Chinese Communist Party was an immediate hit. For more than two decades, Lai used Appleand Next as part of a personal push for democracy. A draconian new security law came into effect in Hong Kong in mid-2020, effectively making human rights advocacy and free speech a crime and censorship a fact. Lai was arrested and held without bail before being convicted on trumped-up charges. At the end of 2023, a lengthy national security trial, that could see him jailed for life, alleged “collusion with foreign forces” and printing seditious materials. China's most famous political prisoner has been held in solitary confinement since December 2020, while his supporters and family continue the fight to have him freed. Mark L. Clifford, former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post and the Standard and President of The Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, draws on his three-decade friendship with Lai to tell the inside story of Lai's activism and his bravery in standing up to 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

How is artificial intelligence transforming journalism as both a profession and an institution? In this episode, Ning Ao speaks to Dr. Joanne Kuai, exploring how AI reshapes journalistic roles, organisational structures, and governance systems through the lens of China's media landscape—while drawing comparisons with the US and EU. Dr. Joanne Kuai is a Research Fellow in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University and holds a PhD from Karlstad University in Sweden. Her research focuses on digital journalism, the social implications of automation and algorithms, and the governance of data and AI. Ning Ao is a PhD student at the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies (ACE) at Lund University. Her research looks at generational differences among Chinese Mongols. Episode producer: Ning Ao - - - - - - Links: Joanne's article-based PhD dissertation: AI, News, and the State: Reinstitutionalising Journalism in Global China's Algorithmic Age Joanne's recommendations: Julie E. Cohen's Between Truth and Power: The Legal Constructions of Informational Capitalism Kevin Xu's bilingual newsletter - Interconnected Ghost in the Shell (1995) Detroit: Become Human Follow Joanne's research on: Joanne Kuai at RMIT University ResearchGate Linkedin The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the following academic partners: Asia Centre, University of Tartu (Estonia) Asian studies, University of Helsinki (Finland) Centre for Asian Studies, Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania) Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University (Sweden) Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku (Finland) Norwegian Network for Asian Studies 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

In Indigenizing Japan: Ainu Past, Present, and Future (University of Arizona Press, 2025), archaeologist Joe E. Watkins provides a comprehensive look at the rich history and cultural resilience of the Ainu, the Indigenous people of Hokkaido, Japan, tracing their journey from ancient times to their contemporary struggles for recognition. Relaying the deep history of the islands of Japan, Watkins tells the archaeological story from the earliest arrivals some 40,000 years ago to 16,000 years ago when local cultures began utilizing pottery and stone tools. About 2,300 years ago, another group of people immigrated from the Korean peninsula into the Japanese archipelago, bringing wet rice agriculture with them. They intermarried with the people who were there, forming the basis of the contemporary Japanese majority culture. As the Japanese state developed on the central Islands of Honshu, Ryukyu, and Shikoku, the people of Hokkaido continued developing along a different trajectory with minimal interaction with the mainland until colonization in the mid-nineteenth century, when the people known as the Ainu came under Japanese governmental policy. Watkins's insightful analysis highlights the Ainu's enduring spirit and their resurgence as part of the global Indigenous movement. Key events such as the 1997 Nibutani Dam case and the 2007 recognition of the Ainu as Japan's Indigenous people are explored in depth, showcasing the Ainu's ongoing fight for cultural preservation and self-determination. By situating the Ainu's experiences within broader global colonial histories, Indigenizing Japan underscores the shared struggles and resilience of Indigenous communities worldwide. Joe E. Watkins is a senior consultant for Archaeological and Cultural Education Consultants (ACE Consultants), based in Tucson, Arizona. His study interests concern the ethical practice of anthropology and anthropology's relationships with descendant communities and populations on a global scale. Caleb Zakarin is editor 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/east-asian-studies

Exploring the boundaries, fringes, and inner workings of civil society, Taru Salmenkari investigates local forms of political agency in China in light of the globalization of political values, practices, and institutions in Global Ideas, Local Adaptations: Chinese Activism and the Will to Make Civil Society (Edward Elgar, 2025). She provides a theoretical framework for globalization, examining new forms of governance emerging with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and how these have reconfigured social power in China.This topical book outlines how civil society has been promoted globally since the 1980s, as NGOs advance development cooperation, democratization, and neoliberal third-sector service production. Salmenkari studies the outcomes of these processes in China, where civil society promotion met strong localizing forces rising from NGO activists'' own values, governmental regulation, and local society. Evaluating various forms of Chinese self-organizing, she discusses the social omissions of Chinese environmental NGO agendas, Confucian ties in global translations, gay self-organizing, and the idea and practice of Minjian. The book identifies complexities within Chinese civil society and how it navigates academia, global partnerships, social exclusions and alternative values, analyzing how these conflicting positions influence Chinese politics and society. Taru Salmenkari is senior research at the University of Helsinki. 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

In the long run, countries in Northeast Asia will have to see the need for collective defense. Otherwise, you won't be able to stop rivalry between powers like the U.S. and China. It sounds utopian now, but so did the idea of French and German soldiers serving under the same command a century ago.                                                                                                                                        – Y.S. Lee, NBN Interview (2025) Sustainable Peace in Northeast Asia (Anthem Press, 2023) examines the enduring political and military tensions in one of the world's most dynamic yet unstable regions, from China and the Korean Peninsula to Japan, Mongolia, and Russia's Far East. Despite its economic vitality, Northeast Asia remains fraught with persistent risks of conflict including North Korea's nuclear program, and the unresolved disputes over territory, history, and power imbalances fueled in part by China's rise. Y.S. Lee traces the political, historical, military, and economic forces behind these tensions and their global implications. Offering a comparative, country-by-country analysis, he also explores the influence of external powers such as the United States and Russia. The book assesses the prospects and consequences of Korean reunification and provides a fresh look at Mongolia's often-overlooked role in regional stability, suggesting how imagination and diplomacy together might begin to rebuild trust across the region. In this NBN interview, Professor Lee discusses how history, ideology, and institutional design intersect across the region – from the entanglement of North Korea's Juche ideology with its nuclear ambitions to Japan's struggle for reconciliation, and South Korea's evolving identity as a middle power. He argues that sustainable peace requires economic, political, and even eventual military cooperation akin to Europe's postwar transformation, which was once unthinkable, but ultimately necessary. Yong-Shik Lee is Director of the Law and Development Institute and a leading scholar of international economic law and institutional reform. His previous works include Law and Development: Theory and Practice (2011; 2nd ed. 2021), Reclaiming Development in the World Trading System (Cambridge University Press, 2nd ed. 2016), and Safeguard Measures in World Trade: The Legal Analysis (Edward Elgar, 3rd ed. 2014). His research bridges economic theory and policy design to advance inclusive development and peace. 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

What does contemporary China's diverse and exciting fiction tell us about its culture, and the relationship between art and politics? The Subplot: What China Is Reading and Why It Matters (Columbia Global Reports, 2022) by Megan Walsh takes us on a lively journey through a literary landscape like you've never seen before: a vast migrant-worker poetry movement, homoerotic romances by “rotten girls,” swaggering literary popstars, millionaire e-writers churning out the longest-ever novels, underground comics, the surreal works of Yu Hua, Yan Lianke, and Nobel-laureate Mo Yan, and what is widely hailed as a golden-age of sci-fi. Chinese online fiction is now the largest publishing platform in the world. Fueled by her passionate engagement with the arts and ideas of China's people, Walsh, a brilliant young critic, shows us why it's important to finally pay attention to Chinese fiction—an exuberant drama that illustrates the complex relationship between art and politics, one that is increasingly shaping the West as well. Turns out, writers write neither what their government nor foreign readers want or expect, as they work on a different wavelength to keep alive ideas and events that are censored by the propaganda machine. The Subplot vividly captures the way in which literature offers an alternative—perhaps truer—way to understanding the contradictions that make up China itself. 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

Chinese cinema has a long history of engagement with China's art traditions, and literati (wenren) landscape painting has been an enduring source of inspiration. Literati Lenses: Wenren Landscape in Chinese Cinema of the Mao Era (U Hawai'i Press, 2019) explores this interplay during the Mao era, a time when cinema, at the forefront of ideological campaigns and purges, was held to strict political guidelines. Through four films―Li Shizhen (1956), Stage Sisters (1964), Early Spring in February (1963), and Legend of Tianyun Mountain (1979)― Mia Liu reveals how landscape offered an alternative text that could operate beyond political constraints and provide a portal for smuggling interesting discourses into the film. While allusions to pictorial traditions associated with a bygone era inevitably took on different meanings in the context of Mao-era cinema, cinematic engagement with literati landscape endowed films with creative and critical space as well as political poignancy. Liu not only identifies how the conventions and aesthetics of traditional literati landscape art were reinvented and mediated on multiple levels in cinema, but also explores how post-1949 Chinese filmmakers configured themselves as modern intellectuals in the spaces forged among the vestiges of the old. In the process, she deepens her analysis, suggesting that landscape be seen as an allegory of human life, a mirror of the age, and a commentary on national affairs. Jing Li teaches Chinese language, literature, and film. Her research explores rural China and independent cinema. She's also guest editor for the Chinese Independent Cinema Observer. 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

A formal approach to anime rethinks globalization and transnationality under neoliberalism Anime has become synonymous with Japanese culture, but its global reach raises a perplexing question--what happens when anime is produced outside of Japan? Who actually makes anime, and how can this help us rethink notions of cultural production?  In Anime's Identity: Performativity and Form Beyond Japan (U Minnesota Press, 2021), Stevie Suan examines how anime's recognizable media-form--no matter where it is produced--reflects the problematics of globalization. The result is an incisive look at not only anime but also the tensions of transnationality. Far from valorizing the individualistic "originality" so often touted in national creative industries, anime reveals an alternate type of creativity based in repetition and variation. In exploring this alternative creativity and its accompanying aesthetics, Suan examines anime from fresh angles, including considerations of how anime operates like a brand of media, the intricacies of anime production occurring across national borders, inquiries into the selfhood involved in anime's character acting, and analyses of various anime works that present differing modes of transnationality. Anime's Identity deftly merges theories from media studies and performance studies, introducing innovative formal concepts that connect anime to questions of dislocation on a global scale, creating a transformative new lens for analyzing popular media. Jingyi Li is a PhD Candidate in Japanese History at the University of Arizona. She researches about early modern Japan, literati, and commercial publishing. 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

Democratic backsliding, culture wars and partisan politics in the past two decades has seen the regression of human rights protections in the courts and across societies. However, having made incremental gains in constitutional courts, LGBTQ+ rights operate as somewhat of a paradox. In this pivotal work, Professor Rehan Abeyratne makes an argument that the progress made in LGBTQ+ rights protection obscures an increased shift towards authoritarian legality in the courts and beyond. Case studies of three apex courts - the U.S. Supreme Court, the Supreme Court of India, and the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal - provide insight into the erosion of democracy and the rule of law across these jurisdictions. Courts and  LGBTQ+ Rights in an Age of Judicial Retrenchment (Oxford UP, 2025) is an important work and should serve as a warning sign to constitutional lawyers, human rights scholars and anybody interested in the values that underpin liberal democracy as to the the limited ability of constitutional courts to protect rights in the current climate.   Professor Rehan Abeyratne is is Professor and Associate Dean (Higher Degree Research) at Western Sydney University School of Law, where he teaches Government and Public Law, Legal Research and Methodology, and Comparative Law: Legal Systems of the World. He also coordinates the School of Law's Honours Program. Professor Abeyratne holds a PhD from Monash University, a JD from Harvard Law School, and a BA (Hons.) in Political Science from Brown University. He researches comparative constitutional law and has published several books and articles in world leading journals. Most of Prof. Abeyratne's research can be freely accessed on SSRN, Academia, and Google Scholar. 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

Queens without a Kingdom worth Ruling: Buddhist Nuns and the Process of Change in Tibetan Monastic Communities is a fascinating study of nuns in the Tibetan Buddhist nunnery of Khachoe Ghakyil Ling in Kathmandu. Written by Dr. Chandra Chiara Ehm, who was a member of this monastic community for nearly a decade, it offers a rare perspective on life in a nunnery. The book explores nuns' lives, their studies, and their and aspirations--we see how young girls and women become nuns, what a day in the life is like, and how their scholastic study is structured, as well as some of the obstacles that the nuns much navigate. It also explores how recent changes in technology, demographics, and secular education are continuing to transform monastic life. This book is a rich and extremely readable blend of ethnographic detail, historical and textual background, and incisive analysis. It would make an excellent contribution to any syllabus on Tibetan Buddhism, women in Buddhism, or Buddhism and modernity. The author, Chandra Chiara Ehm, is a postdoctoral researcher at the the Ecole Francaise d'Èxreme Orient (EFEO) and the Centre de Recherche sur les Civilisations de l'Asie Orientale (CRCAO). She received her PhD in a double degree program in Buddhist Studies at the LMU in Munich and in anthropology at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris . She employs multiple academic methods--notably both philology and qualitative ethnographic work. 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

What can a map do, beyond showing us where things are? Michelle Wang's new book, The Art of Terrestrial Diagrams in Early China (U Chicago Press, 2023), explores this question through images painted on bronze, wood, and silk that were buried in tombs between the fourth and second centuries BCE. Wang encourages readers to look at these images as terrestrial diagrams — pictures that didn't just represent the world, but made worlds. These tools helped the living connect with the dead, linked earthly and cosmic orders, and imagined what the afterlife might look like. Each of the four chapters brings the reader into a different tomb site with different diagrams, including the plan for the grand tomb of King Cuo (who died circa 313 BCE), diagrams in the tomb of a low-level government functionary, and silk drawings from the Mawangdui tombs. Some helped guide descendants through ritual spaces, others recreated bureaucratic systems, and still others laid out auspicious spaces for eternal protection. Throughout, The Art of Terrestrial Diagrams asks questions that reach beyond early China: What makes something a map, or a work of art? When does a picture move from showing the world to shaping it? This book will appeal to readers interested in art history, archaeology, and early Chinese thought, as well as anyone curious about how images can shape our understanding of the world 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

A Chinese Reformer in Exile: Kang Youwei and the Chinese Empire Reform Association in North America, 1899-1911 is an encyclopaedic reference work documenting the exile years of imperial China's most famous reformer, Kang Youwei, and the political organization he mobilized in North America and worldwide to transform China's autocratic empire into a constitutional monarchy. Chinese in Canada, the United States, and Mexico formed at least 160 Chinese Empire Reform Association chapters, incorporating schools, newspapers, military academies, women's associations, businesses, and political pressure campaigns. Based on Robert Worden's 1972 Georgetown University Ph.D. dissertation, a multinational team of historians contribute new insights from 50 years of additional scholarship and previously unknown archival materials. Robert L. Worden, Ph.D. (1972) Georgetown University, retired in 2007 after 34 years at the Library of Congress where he authored more than 100 Asia-related studies for government agencies, and numerous China-related books, articles, and book reviews of personal interest.  Jane Leung Larson is an independent scholar whose broad-based research on the Chinese Empire Reform Association evolved from studying the papers of her grandfather Tom Leung, Kang Youwei's student in Guangzhou and host, travel companion, and confidant in North America.  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. Relevant Links Open Access of A Chinese Reformer in Exile here Sweet Bamboo: A Memoir of a Chinese American Family by Louise Leung Larson here NBN interview for Transpacific Reform and Revolution: The Chinese in North America, 1898-1918: here 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

Commercial dating agencies that facilitate marriages across national borders comprise a $2.5 billion global industry. Ideas about the industry are rife with stereotypes-younger, more physically attractive brides from non-Western countries being paired with older Western men. These ideas are more myth than fact, Monica Liu finds in Seeking Western Men: Email-Order Brides Under China's Global Rise (Stanford UP, 2022).  Her study of China's email-order bride industry offers stories of Chinese women who are primarily middle-aged, divorced, and proactively seeking spouses to fulfill their material and sexual needs. What they seek in their Western partners is tied to what they believe they've lost in the shifting global economy around them. Ranging from multimillionaire entrepreneurs or ex-wives and mistresses of wealthy Chinese businessmen, to contingent sector workers and struggling single mothers, these women, along with their translators and potential husbands from the US, Canada, and Australia, make up the actors in this multifaceted story. Set against the backdrop of China's global economic ascendance and a relative decline of the West, this book asks: How does this reshape Chinese women's perception of Western masculinity? Through the unique window of global internet dating, this book reveals the shifting relationships of race, class, gender, sex, and intimacy across borders. 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

How and why did the Chinese Communist Party rise to power in the 1940s at the expense of its Nationalist (KMT) rival? In his new book, Domination and Mobilization: The Rise and Fall of Political Parties in China's Republican Era (Cambridge University Press, 2025), Professor Xiaobo Lü (UC Berkeley) adopts a new model for thinking about this question. Using new qualitative and quantitative evidence, Lü shows how CCP success was built on dominant leadership and its interaction with a strategy of mass-centric mobilization to harness resources. By contrast, the contested factional leadership of the KMT and its elite-centric mobilization held back the party's power, particularly after it lost its geographical and fiscal base during China's war with Japan. In this interview, Professor Lü draws out the comparison between the two parties going back to the 1920s. He discusses how both parties adapted to the challenges of the Nanjing Decade and the 1937-45 wartime period – and how the legacies of party-building before 1949 still affect China today. Domination and Mobilization is strongly recommended for anyone interested in modern Chinese history, comparative revolutions, and party mobilization in authoritarian systems. Mark Baker is lecturer (assistant professor) in East Asian history at the University of Manchester, UK. 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

Nagasaki: The Last Witnesses (Penguin Random House, 2025) is the second volume in a prize-worthy two-book series based on years of irreplicable personal interviews with survivors about each of the atomic bomb drops, first in Hiroshima and then Nagasaki, that hastened the end of the Pacific War. On August 6, 1945, the United States unleashed a weapon unlike anything the world had ever seen. Then, just three days later, when Japan showed no sign of surrender, the United States took aim at Nagasaki.Rendered in harrowing detail, this historical narrative is the second and final volume in M. G. Sheftall's series Embers. Sheftall has spent years personally interviewing hibakusha—the Japanese word for atomic bomb survivors. These last living witnesses are a vanishing memory resource, the only people who can still provide us with reliable and detailed testimony about life in their cities before the use of nuclear weaponry.The result is an intimate, firsthand account of life in Nagasaki, and the story of incomprehensible devastation and resilience in the aftermath of the second atomic bomb drop. This blow-by-blow account takes us from the city streets, as word of the attack on Hiroshima reaches civilians, to the cockpit of Bockscar, when Charles Sweeney dropped “Fat Man,” to the interminable six days while the world waited to see if Japan would surrender to the Allies–or if more bombs would fall. Related Genres: Asian World History, 1950 – Present Military History, World War II Military History Praise for M.G. Sheftall's Embers Series: “Sheftall's meticulous, novelistic recreations are deeply immersive. It's an invaluable contribution to 20th century history.”—Publishers Weekly on Nagasaki (Embers: Volume II) (starred review)“A definitive account of a watershed moment in history.”—Kirkus on Nagasaki (Embers: Volume II)“M.G. Sheftall's Hiroshima presents as a master class in eyewitness storytelling. As poignant as it is powerful, this gripping narrative chronicles one of history's darkest nightmare moments—the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in August 1945—and the memories of its surviving eyewitnesses. As the events fade from living memory, Hiroshima is at once a brilliant tribute and a cautionary tale.”—Annie Jacobsen, author of Nuclear War: A Scenario“An important, deep-dive book into most every detail about the atomic bomb's making and use, in anger. A strong argument for why it must never be allowed to be used for any reason whatsoever. This book adds significantly to the argument that we need to back up fast and return to nuclear arms reduction.”—Charles Pellegrino, author of To Hell and Back: The Last Train from Hiroshima“M.G. Sheftall takes us on a deep dive into one of the most significant and horrific events in world history. Hiroshima is a gripping, moving story of fear and shame, courage and grace, and a powerful argument that we should never, ever use these weapons again.”—Evan Thomas, author of Road to Surrender: Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II“A compelling analysis of the suffering endured by the citizens of Hiroshima in the aftermath of the dropping of the nuclear bomb on 6 August 1945. Written by a scholar who lives and works in Japan, and who has interviewed many of the last survivors, this is a book that offers valuable insights into Japanese thinking during the war and the subsequent struggle to rebuild the country.”—Laurence Rees, author of Auschwitz and The Holocaust 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

Edited by Todd A. Henry, Queer Korea (Duke UP, 2020) offers a vital and long-overdue examination of this subject. More than an academic text, it is a powerful collection that brings to light the hidden histories of non-normative sexuality and gender expression on the Korean Peninsula. The book challenges the notion that queerness is a recent, Western import. Instead, it uncovers a rich and complex history of same-sex unions and diverse identities—stories that have too often been silenced or strategically used to reinforce nationalistic and patriarchal ideals. It also explores how media and society, from the colonial era to the present day, have deployed discourses of deviance as a means of control and assimilation. What makes Queer Korea especially compelling is that it is not the work of one voice alone, but a union effort of many dedicated scholars who have each contributed their expertise to the field. Together, they create a multidimensional picture of queer life in Korea, bridging personal narratives, historical analysis, and cultural critique. Queer Korea is essential reading for anyone seeking a fuller understanding of Korean history. It highlights struggles for visibility, the quiet resilience of “under-the-radar” communities, and the surprising ways queer lives have helped shape the nation's cultural and social landscape. Above all, it reminds us that queer history is not separate, but deeply woven into the very fabric of a country's past. A Personal Journey Behind the Book The project grew not only out of academic curiosity, but also from Henry's personal encounters and experiences in South Korea. These moments became the spark that inspired him to unearth stories too often overlooked. The journey of bringing the book to life was not without challenges, yet his determination to make these histories visible remained a powerful driving force. That personal investment—combined with the collective commitment of the contributing scholars—infuses the work with a depth and authenticity that makes Queer Korea resonate even more strongly. Dr Todd A. Henry (PhD, UCLA, 2006; Assistant/Associate Professor, UCSD, 2009-Present) is a specialist of modern Korea with an interest in the period of Japanese rule (1910-1945) and its postcolonial afterlives (1945-). A social and cultural historian attuned to global forces that (re) produce lived spaces, he studies cross-border processes linking South Korea, North Korea, Japan, and the US in the creation of “Hot War” militarisms, the transpacific practice of medical sciences, and the lived experiences of heteropatriarchal capitalism. Also a historian of gender, sex, and sexuality, Dr. Henry seeks to expand Euro-American-centric approaches to queerness, transgenderism, and intersexuality through a sustained focus on Asian forms of embodiment that center the geopolitics of imperialism/colonialism, military occupation, and diasporic mobility. Bing Wang receives her PhD at the University of Leeds in 2020. Her research interests include the exploration of overseas Chinese cultural identity and critical heritage studies. She is also a freelance translator. 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

Today I had the pleasure of talking to Professor Xiang Biao on his new book, Self as Method: Thinking Through China and the World, which was originally written and published in Chinese. The English translation has just come out with Palgrave Macmillan. Self as Method provides a manifesto of intellectual activism that counsels China's young people to think by themselves and for themselves. Consisting of three conversations between Xiang Biao, a social anthropologist, and Wu Qi, a rising journalist, the book probes how China has reached its current stage and how young people can make changes. The Chinese version, 把自己作为方法, was named the “most impactful book of 2021” by Dou4ban4, China's premier website for rating books, films, and music. The English version, which is entirely Open Access and downloadable for free, was translated by David Ownby. The book reached 157,000 downloads in just over a couple of months. Dr. Suvi Rautio is an anthropologist of 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

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, modern Chinese intellectuals, reformers, revolutionaries, leftist journalists, and idealistic youth often crossed the increasing gap between the city and the countryside, which made the act of "going to the countryside" a distinctively modern experience and a continuous practice in China. Such a spatial crossing eventually culminated in the socialist state program of "down to the villages" movements during the 1960s and 1970s. What then was the special significance of "going to the countryside" before that era? Yu Zhang explores the cultural representations and practices of this practice between 1915 and 1965, focusing on individual homecoming, rural reconstruction, revolutionary journeys, the revolutionary "going down to the people" as well as going to the frontiers and rural hometowns for socialist construction. As part of the larger discourses of enlightenment, revolution, and socialist industrialization, the act of going to the countryside entailed new ways of looking at the world and ordinary people, brought about new experiences of space and time, initiated new means of human communication and interaction, and generated new forms of cultural production. Going to the Countryside: The Rural in the Modern Chinese Cultural Imagination, 1915–1965 (U of Michigan Press, 2020) argues that this new body of cultural productions did not merely turn the rural into a constantly changing representational space; most importantly, the rural has been constructed as a distinct modern experiential and aesthetic realm characterized by revolutionary changes in human conceptions and sentiments. Through her close examinations of the practice, Yu Zhang shows a fundamental epistemic shift in modern China and ultimately how it creates a new aesthetic, social, and political landscape. Jing Li teaches Chinese language and modern Chinese literature and film. Her research focuses on rural China and independent cinema. She is developing a public humanities project on Chinese rural cinema, and serves as guest editor for the Chinese Independent Film Archive (CIFA). 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

How do new ideas and beliefs take root when they cross cultural and linguistic borders? In seventeenth-century Taiwan, both Dutch and Spanish missionaries tried to replace Indigenous gods, practices, and laws with their own Christian traditions. Christopher Joby's Christian Mission in Seventeenth-Century Taiwan: A Reception History of Texts, Beliefs, and Practices (Brill, 2025) explores this moment in history through a new lens: reception. Rather than focusing only on what missionaries brought, he looks at how Indigenous communities responded. Central to the story are experiments in translation and text-making, including ministers creating prayers and catechisms in local languages, and the invention of new scripts.  The legacy of these efforts stretched far beyond the seventeenth century, too. Some texts continued to shape religious practice in Taiwan after the Dutch were expelled in 1662, while others circulated in Europe, informing how outsiders imagined the island. By tracing these journeys, Joby shows how Taiwan's early missions were not just local episodes but part of a much larger global history of translation, improvisation, and exchange. This book will be of particular interest to scholars of early modern Taiwan, the history of Christian missions, and the global circulation of texts and ideas. And if you are interested in learning more about his work, you can listen to Joby's earlier appearance on the New Books Network to talk about an earlier book, The Dutch Language in Japan (1600-1900), here.  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

Partition—the rapid, uncoordinated, and bloody split between India and Pakistan after the Second World War—remains the central event of South Asian history. But 1947 wasn't the only partition, according to historian and filmmaker Sam Dalrymple. Sam, in his book Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia (William Collins, 2025), notes that “British India” once spanned all the way from the Arabian Peninsula to the border with Thailand, covering South Arabia, South Asia and Burma. Yet between 1937 and 1971, the region split into various different national entities, creating the countries and borders we see today. Sam is a historian, filmmaker, and cofounder of Project Dastaan, a peacebuilding initiative that reconnects refugees displaced by the 1947 partition of India. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Shattered Lands. 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

We often think of censorship as governments removing material or harshly punishing people who spread or access information. But Margaret E. Roberts' new book Censored: Distraction and Diversion Inside China's Great Firewall (Princeton University Press, 2020) reveals the nuances of censorship in the age of the internet. She identifies 3 types of censorship: fear (threatening punishment to deter the spread or access of information); friction (increasing the time or money necessary to access information); and flooding (publishing information to distract, confuse, or dilute). Roberts shows how China customizes repression by using friction and flooding (censorship that is porous) to deter the majority of citizens whose busy schedules and general lack of interest in politics make it difficult to spend extra time and money accessing information. Highly motivated elites (e.g. journalists, activists) who are willing to spend the extra time and money to overcome the boundaries of both friction and flooding meanwhile may face fear and punishment. The two groups end up with very different information – complicating political coordination between the majority and elites. Roberts's highly accessible book negotiates two extreme positions (the internet will bring government accountability v. extreme censorship) to provide a more nuanced understanding of digital politics, the politics of repression, and political communication. Even if there is better information available, governments can create friction on distribution or flood the internet with propaganda. Looking at how China manages censorship provides insights not only for other authoritarian governments but also democratic governments. Liberal democracies might not use fear but they can affect access and availability – and they may find themselves (as the United States did in the 2016 presidential election) subject to flooding from external sources. The podcast includes Roberts' insights on how the Chinese censored information on COVID-19 and the effect that had on the public. Foreign Affairs named Censored one of its Best Books of 2018 and it was also honored with the Goldsmith Award and the Best Book in Human Rights Section and Information Technology and Politics section of the American Political Science Association. Susan Liebell is associate professor of political science at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia. She is the author of Democracy, Intelligent Design, and Evolution: Science for Citizenship (Routledge, 2013). 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

Dan Wang is a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover History Lab, and previously a fellow at Yale Law School's Paul Tsai China Center. Before that, he was an analyst focused on China's technology capabilities at Gavekal Dragonomics, based across Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shanghai. Dan is perhaps best known for a series of annual letters, published between 2017-2023, which encapsulate his reflections on Chinese society; his writing has also appeared in other outlets including Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and beyond. In this New Books Network Episode, Dan discusses his debut book Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future (Norton, 2025). Styled as an aggregation of seven of his famed annual letters, Breakneck presents a dichotomy of China and the US as an “engineering state” and "lawyerly society” respectively, and traces how China's “engineering state” has shaped Chinese society over the last decade.  Breakneck is now available for purchase online and in physical bookstores. Show notes: Dan's website Dan's annual letters: 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017 Dan's blogpost about Breakneck, which we reference several times in the episode China-related English books that Dan mentions: The Halls of Uselessness (Simon Leys), Other Rivers (Peter Hessler), Invitation to a Banquet (Fuchsia Dunlop) Chinese-language movies from 2017+ that Anthony recommends for illustrating a diverse spectrum of sociopolitical noteworthiness: Wolf Warrior 2 (for China's nationalistic/geopolitical narrative), Upstream (for China's tech industry/labor market), Detention (for Taiwanese popular memory on authoritarianism); plus two additional movies not mentioned in the episode — Ne Zha 2 (for China's soft power potential) and Limbo (for a dark taste of Hong Kong's contemporary malaise).  Chinese-language movies that Dan recommendations: Caught by the Tides (Jia Zhangke), One Second (Zhang Yimou) Anthony Kao is a writer who intersects international affairs and cultural criticism. He founded/edits Cinema Escapist—a publication exploring the sociopolitical context behind global film and television—and also writes for outlets like The Guardian, Al Jazeera, The Diplomat, and Eater. 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

Why have Asian states - colonial and independent - imprisoned people on a massive scale in detention camps? How have detainees experienced the long months and years of captivity? And what does the creation of camps and the segregation of people in them mean for society as a whole? Detention Camps in Asia: The Conditions of Confinement in Modern Asian History (Brill, 2022) is an ambitious book surveys the systems of detention camps set up in Asia from the beginning of the 20th century in The Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, Malaya, Myanmar (Burma), Vietnam, Timor, Korea and 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

I'm Nicholas Gordon, host of the Asian Review of Books podcast, done in partnership with the New Books Network. On this show, we interview authors writing in, around, and about the Asia-Pacific region.King Lear, one of Shakespeare's most famous tragedies, starts with Lear dividing up his kingdom between his three daughters: Goneril, Regan and Cordelia. Goneril and Regan win the kingdom through flattery, Cordelia's honesty is rewarded with exile. That opening–and the other developments in Lear's tragic story–hold special resonance for Nan Z. Da, who uses Shakespeare's play as a way to grapple with China's history, and her own personal experiences with it. The result is The Chinese Tragedy of King Lear (Princeton UP, 2025)Nan Z. Da is associate professor of English at Johns Hopkins University and the author of Intransitive Encounter: Sino-US Literatures and the Limits of Exchange (Columbia University Press: 2018) You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Chinese Tragedy of King Lear. 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

Chile holds the distinction of being the first South American nation to forge diplomatic ties with the People's Republic of China, as well as the first in Latin America to enter into a free trade agreement with China. Despite the nearly 24-hour journey required to travel between the two countries, this considerable distance has not hindered the expanding interactions between them. The presence of various waves of the Chinese diaspora in Chile, while often overlooked, is a real aspect of the country's demographic landscape. In this episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast, Maria Montt Strabucchi, an Associate Professor at the Institute of History at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (Pontifical Catholic University of Chile) and Vice President for International Affairs at the same University, discusses the deepening connections between Chile and China and their implications for the development of China-related studies and education within Chile. Maria Montt Strabucchi served as the alternate director of the “Millennium Nucleus Impacts of China in Latin America (ICLAC)” project, which is supported by the Chilean National Agency for Research and Development. This initiative provides free online courses in Spanish aimed at enhancing understanding of China and has also developed online investment maps to illustrate China's influence in Chile. Her research interests encompass the portrayal of "China" and "Chineseness," as well as the dynamics of Chinese-Latin American relations, particularly in the context of Chile. Her 2023 publication, “Representation of China in Latin American Literature (1987-2016)” (Liverpool University Press), is available as an open-access resource. Julie Yu-Wen Chen is Professor of Chinese Studies at the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki (Finland). Since 2023, she has been involved in the EUVIP: The EU in the Volatile Indo-Pacific Region, a project funded by the European Union's Horizon Europe coordination and support action 10107906 (HORIZON-WIDERA-2021-ACCESS-03). 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

China has become deeply integrated into the world economy. Yet, gradual marketization has facilitated the country's rise without leading to its wholesale assimilation to global neoliberalism. This book uncovers the fierce contest about economic reforms that shaped China's path. In the first post-Mao decade, China's reformers were sharply divided. They agreed that China had to reform its economic system and move toward more marketization - but struggled over how to go about it. Should China destroy the core of the socialist system through shock therapy, or should it use the institutions of the planned economy as market creators? With hindsight, the historical record proves the high stakes behind the question: China embarked on an economic expansion commonly described as unprecedented in scope and pace, whereas Russia's economy collapsed under shock therapy. Based on extensive research, including interviews with key Chinese and international participants and World Bank officials as well as insights gleaned from unpublished documents, How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate (Routledge, 2021) charts the debate that ultimately enabled China to follow a path to gradual reindustrialization. Beyond shedding light on the crossroads of the 1980s, it reveals the intellectual foundations of state-market relations in reform-era China through a longue durée lens. Isabella M. Weber is a political economist working on China, global trade and the history of economic thought. She is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Research Leader for China at the Political Economy Research Institute. Host Peter Lorentzen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of San Francisco, where he leads a new Master's program in Applied Economics focused on the digital economy. His own research focuses on China's political economy and governance. 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

Once a powerful figure who reversed the disintegration of China and steered the country to Allied victory in World War II, Chiang Kai-shek fled into exile following his 1949 defeat in the Chinese civil war. As attention pivoted to Mao Zedong's communist experiment, Chiang was relegated to the dustbin of history. In Chiang Kai-shek's Politics of Shame, Grace Huang reconsiders Chiang's leadership and legacy by drawing on an extraordinary and uncensored collection of his diaries, telegrams, and speeches stitched together by his secretaries. She paints a new, intriguing portrait of this twentieth-century leader who advanced a Confucian politics of shame to confront Japanese incursion into China and urge unity among his people. In also comparing Chiang's response to imperialism to those of Mao, Yuan Shikai, and Mahatma Gandhi, Grace widens the implications of her findings to explore alternatives to Western expressions of nationalism and modernity and reveal how leaders of vulnerable states can use potent cultural tools to inspire their country and contribute to an enduring national identity. Grace Huang is professor of government at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY. She likes to tackle a range of intellectual questions, including: what are the conditions in leadership that promote collective inspiration versus collective hysteria or violence? How do talented subordinates weigh their ability to modify a leader's deleterious actions against their moral culpability of participating in those policies? How does a particular democratic ideology and culture shape the choices of working mothers, and how do such mothers make decisions about care, family, and work? Her research interests include political leadership, the political uses of shame in Chinese leadership, and gender, labor, and the family. She can be reached at ghuang@stlawu.edu. Dong Wang is distinguished professor of history and director of the Wellington Koo Institute for Modern China in World History at Shanghai University (since 2016), a member of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and an elected Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. 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

How did Tokyo—Japan's capital, global city, tourist hotspot and financial center—get to where it is today? Tokyo–or then, Edo–had a rather unglamorous start, as a backwater on Japan's eastern coast before Tokugawa decided to make it his de facto capital. Eiko Maruko Siniawer picks ten distinct moments in Edo's, and then Tokyo's, history to show how this village became one of the world's most important cities. Moments like a brief crackdown on kabuki theater, or the opening ceremony of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics make up the chapters of what's appropriately titled Ten Moments That Shaped Tokyo (Cambridge University Press: 2025) Eiko is the Charles R. Keller Professor of History at Williams College. A historian of modern Japan who has researched a wide range of topics, she is the author of three books—Ruffians, Yakuza, Nationalists: The Violent Politics of Modern Japan, 1860-1960 (Cornell University Press: 2015), Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan (Cornell University Press: 2024), and Ten Moments That Shaped Tokyo. She has also published articles in leading academic journals, such as “‘Affluence of the Heart': Wastefulness and the Search for Meaning in Millennial Japan” in the Journal of Asian Studies, and “‘Toilet Paper Panic': Uncertainty and Insecurity in Early 1970s Japan” in the American Historical Review. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Ten Moments That Shaped 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. 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

Shaping the Blue Dragon: Maritime China in the Ming and Qing Dynasties (Liverpool UP, 2024) offers a vivid look at China's dynamic and longstanding relationship with the sea. Through the lives of pirates, maritime advisors, cartographers, admirals, writers, and travelers, Ronald C. Po brings maritime China to life — revealing a world far more connected and sea-orientated than often assumed. Richly detailed and captivating, Shaping the Blue Dragon should interest those in Chinese history, East Asian history, and the maritime world. But this is also a book for anyone who loves great stories. Packed with figures from a pirate king ruling the South China Seas to a gentry son-turned-traveler shipwrecked on his voyage to Southeast Asia, Shaping the Blue Dragon is a compelling blend of narrative and analysis. During our conversation we also talked about Po's first book, The Blue Frontier: Maritime Vision and Power in the Qing Empire (Cambridge UP, 2018) (a must-read!). Listeners who want to know more about this book in particular should also check out the episode about the book The Chinese History Podcast 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

Better Innovations, to talk about Taiwan as a home for migrant workers, and decent work in supply chains. After a brief overview of key risks in this area, we touched upon Taiwan's major legislation to date in a global context, and addressed the importance of economic diplomacy for Taiwan – being seen as a responsible global actor in business and human rights. Drawing on our guest's experience as a practitioner, we then explored how Taiwanese suppliers see their role as leaders in improving labour standards. Countering stereotypical associations between businesses and human rights abuses, we investigated the possibilities, limitations and responsibilities that firms perceive for themselves in transitioning to a fairer model of labour recruitment and protection, as well as the role of the 2020 National Action Plan in setting this transition in motion. Finally, we used a regional (Asian) framework of reference to discuss the need for Taiwan's government to provide clear guidelines that could help Taiwanese companies bridge the knowledge gap between existing local legal frameworks and international human rights standards. 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

Erich Auerbach wrote his classic work Mimesis, a history of narrative from Homer to Proust, based largely on his memory of past reading. Having left his physical library behind when he fled to Istanbul to escape the Nazis, he was forced to rely on the invisible library of his mind. Each of us has such a library—if not as extensive as Auerbach's—even if we are unaware of it. In this erudite and provocative book, William Marx explores our invisible libraries—how we build them and how we should expand them.Libraries, Marx tells us, are mental realities, and, conversely, our minds are libraries. We never read books apart from other texts. We take them from mental shelves filled with a variety of works that help us understand what we are reading. And yet the libraries in our mind are not always what they should be. The selection on our mental shelves—often referred to as canon, heritage, patrimony, or tradition—needs to be modified and expanded. Our intangible libraries should incorporate what Marx calls the dark matter of literature: the works that have been lost, that exist only in fragments, that have been repurposed by their authors, or were never written in the first place. Marx suggests methods for recovering this missing literature, but he also warns us that adding new titles to our libraries is not enough. We must also adopt a new attitude, one that honors the diversity and otherness of literary works. We must shed our preconceptions and build within ourselves a mental world library. William Marx is professor of comparative literature at the Collège de France. He is the author of The Hatred of Literature, The Tomb of Oedipus: Why Greek Tragedies Were Not Tragic, and other books. 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. 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

Emerging from collapse of the Han empire, the founders of Northern Wei had come south from the grasslands of Inner Asia to conquer the rich farmlands of the Yellow River plains. Northern Wei was, in fact, the first of the so-called "conquest dynasties" complex states seen repeatedly in East Asian history in which Inner Asian peoples ruled parts of the Chinese world. An innovative contribution to East Asian and Chinese history of the medieval period, Northern Wei (386-534) combines received historical text and archaeological findings to examine the complex interactions between these originally distinct populations, and the way those interactions changed over time. Scott Pearce analyses traditions borrowed and adapted from the long-gone Han dynasty including government and taxation as well as the new cultural elements such as the use of armor for man and horse in the cavalry and the newly-invented stirrup. Further, this book discusses the fundamental change in the dynastic family, as empresses began to play an increasingly important role in the business of government. Though Northern Wei fell in the early sixth century, the nature of the state was thus fundamentally changed, in the Chinese world and East Asia as a whole; it had laid down a foundation from which a century later would emerge the world empire of Tang. 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

Hidden Heroes (Anthem Press, 2025) offers a rare and intimate glimpse into the lives of ordinary North Koreans through a collection of short stories by renowned DPRK authors. Spanning from the 1980s to the present, these works explore the theme of the “hidden hero,” a popular moniker in the DPRK to describe the average citizen who navigates the complexities of daily life with quiet dedication for their work and country. In this interview, Dr. Kim and Dr. Berthelier discuss the appeal of North Korean literature, their approach to translating the collection, and how sharing stories reminds readers of our shared humanity. Dr. Benoit Berthelier is a senior lecturer in Korean Studies at the University of Sydney. His research interests include North Korea's cultural industries and digital technologies. View his university profile here.  Dr. Immanuel Kim is The Korea Foundation and Kim-Renaud Professor of Korean Literature and Culture Studies at George Washington University. His research focuses on the changes and development, particularly in the representations of women, sexuality, and memory, of North Korean literature from the 1960s to present day. View his university profile here.  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/east-asian-studies

When you mention Japanese War crimes in World War Two, you'll often get different responses from different generations. The oldest among us will talk about the Bataan Death March. Younger people, coming of age in the 1990s, will mention the Rape of Nanking or the comfort women forced into service by the Japanese army. Occasionally, someone will mention biological warfare. Frank Jacob has offered a valuable service by surveying Japanese mistreatment of civilians and soldiers comprehensively. His book, Japanese War Crimes during World War II: Atrocity and the Psychology of Collective Violence (Praeger, 2018), is short and doesn't treat any event or issue in depth. But he offers a lucid and thorough evaluation of the literature and nuggets of additional insight. And he frames it with a thoughtful attempt to explain the conduct about which he is writing. If you're looking for a deep dive into a particular topic, you're not the audience Jacob had in mind. But this is a good place to come to grips with the broad picture of Japanese misconduct during the war. Kelly McFall is Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University. He's the author of four modules in the Reacting to the Past series, including The Needs of Others: Human Rights, International Organizations and Intervention in Rwanda, 1994, published by W. W. Norton Press. 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

Challenging the geographical narrative of the history of Islam, Chiara Formichi's new book Islam and Asia: A History (Cambridge University Press, 2020), helps us to rethink how we tell the story of Islam and the lived expressions of Muslims without privileging certain linguistic, cultural, and geographic realities. Focusing on themes of reform, political Islamism, Sufism, gender, as well as a rich array of material culture (such as sacred spaces and art), the book maps the development of Islam in Asia, such as in Kashmir, Indonesia, Malaysia, and China. It considers both transnational and transregional ebbs and flows that have defined the expansion and institutionalization of Islam in Asia, while attending to factors such as ethnicity, linguistic identity and even food cultures as important realities that have informed the translation of Islam into new regions. It is the “convergence and conversation” between the “local” and “foreign” or better yet between the theoretical notions of “centre” and “periphery” of Islam and Muslim societies that are dismantled in the book, defying any notions of Asian expressions of Islam as a “derivative reality.” The book is accessibly written and will be extremely useful in any undergraduate or graduate courses on Islam, Islam in Asia, or political Islam. The book will also be of interest to those who work on Islamic Studies and Asia Studies. Shobhana Xavier is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Queen's University. Her research areas are on contemporary Sufism in North America and South Asia. She is the author of Sacred Spaces and Transnational Networks in American Sufism (Bloombsury Press, 2018) and a co-author of Contemporary Sufism: Piety, Politics, and Popular Culture (Routledge, 2017). More details about her research and scholarship may be found here and here. She may be reached at shobhana.xavier@queensu.ca . You can follow her on Twitter via @shobhanaxavier 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

Sarah Teasley's Designing Modern Japan (Reaktion, 2022) unpicks the history of Japanese design from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth, focusing on continuities and disruptions within communities and practices of design. Designing Modern Japan explores design in the unfolding contexts of modernization, empire and war, defeat and reconstruction, postwar economic acceleration, and beyond. Throughout, Teasley is sensitive to issues of gender and class within the communities of design she studies. The book combines the history of design with social, economic, and geopolitical history, placing design and its material objects carefully in the larger currents of modern and contemporary Japan. Designing Modern Japan is a history of both the people who shaped Japanese design and the designs that were integral to life in modern Japan. Nathan Hopson is an associate professor of Japanese language and history in the University of Bergen's Department of Foreign Languages. 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

Mao and Markets: The Communist Roots of Chinese Enterprise (Yale University Press, 2022) by Dr. Christopher Marquis & Dr. Kunyuan Qiao presents a thoroughly researched assessment of how China's economic success continues to be shaped by the communist ideology of Chairman Mao It was long assumed that as China embraced open markets and private enterprise, its state-controlled economy would fall by the wayside, that free markets would inevitably lead to a more liberal society. Instead, China's growth over the past four decades has positioned state capitalism as a durable foil to the orthodoxy of free markets, to the confusion of many in the West. Christopher Marquis and Kunyuan Qiao argue that China's economic success is based on—not in spite of—the continuing influence of Communist leader Mao Zedong. They illustrate how Mao's ideological principles, mass campaigns, and socialist institutions have enduringly influenced Chinese entrepreneurs' business strategies and the management of their ventures. Grounded in case studies and quantitative analyses, this book shows that while private enterprise is the engine of China's growth, Chinese companies see no contradictions between commercial drive and a dedication to Maoist ideology. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. 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

Ian Johnson's new book, The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao (Pantheon, 2017),  was called "a masterpiece of observation and empathy" by The New York Review of Books, and The Economist, who included the book on its Best of 2017 list, said the book, "Shows how a resurgence of faith is quietly changing the country." The Guardian said the book is "full of moving encounters with Chinese citizens ... Johnson succeeds in having produced a nuanced group portrait of Chinese citizens striving for non-material answers in an era of frenetic materialism." I just finished the book myself and was stunning in its portrayals. If you hope to understand the trajectory of modern China, arguably the fastest-rising international superpower, understanding the religious Taoist, Christianity, folk religion, and Islam of China will be helpful, if not essential. A Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, Ian Johnson is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and The New York Times; his work has also appeared in The New Yorker and National Geographic. He is an advising editor for the Journal of Asian Studies and teaches courses on religion in Beijing. He is the author of The Souls of China, Wild Grass, A Mosque in Munich, and The Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West. Greg Soden is the host "Classical Ideas," a podcast about religion and religious ideas. You can find it on iTunes here. 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