New Books in Japanese Studies

Feb 11 2025 424 ep. 59 mins 391
New Books in Japanese Studies Podcast artwork

Interviews with Scholars of Japan about their New Books

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Jaqueline Berndt, "The Cambridge Companion to Manga and Anime" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

Feb 11 2025 44 mins  
In recent years, manga and anime have attracted increasing scholarly interest beyond the realm of Japanese studies. This Companion takes a unique approach, committed to exploring both the similarities and differences between these two distinct but interrelated media forms. Firmly based in Japanese sources, The Cambridge Companion to Manga and Anime (Cambridge UP, 2024) offers a liv

Finlandization to ‘Finland Boom‘ in Japan: Finland’s Public Diplomacy in Japan

Feb 08 2025 25 mins  
Finland, a minor player on the international arena and burdened with the tag of ‘Finlandization’ during much of the post-WWII period, has won surprisingly positive visibility and a strong nation brand in the far-off Japan in the 2000’s. How has such a transformation of a small state’s reputation been possible? In this episode, Dr. Laura Ipatti, Postdoctoral Researcher at th

Arvid J. Lukauskas and Yumiko Shimabukuro, "Misery Beneath the Miracle in East Asia" (Cornell UP, 2024)

Feb 07 2025 71 mins  
Misery beneath the Miracle in East Asia (Cornell University Press, 2024) challenges prevailing views of the East Asian economic miracle. Existing scholarship has overlooked the severity, persistence, and harmful consequences of the social-welfare crises affecting the region. Dr. Arvid J. Lukauskas and Dr. Yumiko Shimabukuro fill this gap and put a major asterisk on East Asia's econ

Andrew Campana, "Expanding Verse: Japanese Poetry at the Edge of Media" (U California Press, 2024)

Feb 06 2025 62 mins  
Cinepoems, tape recorder poems, protest performance poems, music video poems, internet sign language poems, and augmented reality poems: these poems might exist at the margins of conventional poetic practice, but they take center stage in Expanding Verse: Japanese Poetry at the Edge of Media (University of California Press, 2024) by Andrew Campana. Expanding Verse explores the role

Lionel Barber, "Gambling Man: The Wild Ride of Japan’s Masayoshi Son" (Atria, 2024)

Feb 01 2025 33 mins  
As Wall Street swooned and boomed through the last decade, our livelihoods have—now more than ever—come to rely upon the good sense and risk appetites of a few standout investors. And amidst the BlackRocks, Vanguards, and Berkshire Hathaways stands arguably the most iconoclastic of them all: SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son. In Gambling Man: The Wild Ride of Japan’s Masayoshi Son (

Book Chat: The Life Story of Father Nguyễn, a Vietnamese Refugee Who Migrated to Taiwan, with Lin Shu-fen

Jan 26 2025 36 mins  
In this podcast, the host, Lara Momesso, introduces a book she co-edited with Dr Polina Ivanova (University of Bremen) titled Refugees and Asylum Seekers in East Asia: Perspective from Japan and Taiwan (Palgrave MacMillan, 2024), and she interviews one of the authors of the book, Dr Shu-fen Lin, at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University. In this chat, Shu-fen Lin explores the lif

Catherine Butler, "British Children's Literature in Japanese Culture: Wonderlands and Looking-Glasses" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

Jan 20 2025 73 mins  
Whether watching Studio Ghibli adaptations of British children's books, visiting Harry Potter sites in Britain or eating at Alice in Wonderland-themed restaurants in Tokyo, the Japanese have a close and multifaceted relationship with British children's literature. In British Children's Literature in Japanese Culture: Wonderlands and Looking-Glasses (Bloomsbury, 2023), Catherine But

Katharine E. McGregor, "Systemic Silencing: Activism, Memory, and Sexual Violence in Indonesia" (U Wisconsin Press, 2023)

Jan 19 2025 48 mins  
The system of prostitution imposed and enforced by the Japanese military during its wartime occupation of several countries in East and Southeast Asia is today well-known and uniformly condemned. Transnational activist movements have sought to recognize and redress survivors of this World War II-era system, euphemistically known as "comfort women," for decades, with a major wave be

Marc Gallicchio, "Unconditional: The Japanese Surrender in World War II" (Oxford UP, 2020)

Jan 04 2025 87 mins  
Signed on September 2, 1945 aboard the American battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay by Japanese and Allied leaders, the instrument of surrender formally ended the war in the Pacific and brought to a close one of the most cataclysmic engagements in history, one that had cost the lives of millions. VJ―Victory over Japan―Day had taken place two weeks or so earlier, in the wake of

James Welker, "Transfiguring Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan: Feminists, Lesbians, and Girls' Comics Artists and Fans" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)

Dec 28 2024 56 mins  
Transfiguring Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan: Feminists, Lesbians, and Girls' Comics Artists and Fans (U Hawaii Press, 2024) examines three dynamic and overlapping communities of women and adolescent girls who challenged Japanese gender and sexual norms in the 1970s and 1980s. These spheres encompassed activists in the ūman ribu (women’s liberation) movement, members of t