New Books in Japanese Studies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ines Prodöhl’s Globalizing the Soybean: Fat, Feed, and Sometimes Food, c. 1900-1950 (Routledge, 2023) is a history of how, why, and where the soybean became a critical ingredient in industry and agriculture in the first half of the twentieth century. Focusing on Japanese-dominated Manchuria, Germany, and the United States, Prodöhl shows that the soybean was a serendipitous solution to numerous and varied crises from the beginning of the century into the post-WWII decades. This story of imperialism, globalization, and technology begins in northeast China, the world’s soy cultivation center until the 1940s. It takes us to Germany, the number one importer of soybeans in the interwar period, and illuminates the various ways in which soy was integrated into the economy especially after the end of WWI as both an invaluable oilseed for industry and a source of protein-rich fodder for agriculture. Finally, Prodöhl explores how the United States first adopted the soybean mostly as a solution to overtaxed soils. Mixing economic, ecological, political, and technological/scientific history with a keen sense of the materiality of soy as a global product, Globalizing the Soybean is an accessible and enlightening book that will appeal to multiple audiences. This book is available open access here. This episode was recorded in person in the studios of Media City Bergen with technical assistance from Frode Ims. 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/japanese-studies

Florentine Koppenborg’s Japan’s Nuclear Disaster and the Politics of Safety Governance (Cornell UP, 2023) begins with the understated observation that the triple disaster of March 2011 “exposed severe deficiencies in Japan’s nuclear safety governance.” This is the starting point for the rather curious story of the regulatory reforms taken up in the wake of the Fukushima disaster and how they created a new system with a strong independent nuclear safety regulator that has refused to back down even as the political tides have changed, and what this has meant for energy policy in Japan in the past dozen years. Koppenborg’s history of nuclear power regulation in Japan also seriously considers the implications of this dramatic break for regimes in other countries. This case study provides a complex and thought-provoking contribution to discussions of the role of nuclear power and independent regulation in global efforts to decarbonize our energy supply. 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/japanese-studies

Cooperative Evangelist: Kagawa Toyohiko and His World, 1888-1960 (University of Hawai’i Press, 2025) by Bo Tao uncovers the extraordinary world of a Japanese man who was once described as the “Saint Francis” or the “Gandhi” of Japan. A renowned religious figure on the world stage, Kagawa Toyohiko (1888–1960) received wide acclaim for his work as a street preacher in the slums of Kobe as well as his espousal of nonviolent methods of social reform. His reputation as a pacifist figure, however, rested uneasily with his wartime actions, which became increasingly supportive of the Japanese government and its expansionist policies. Reluctant to speak up against Japan’s increasing aggression in the late 1930s, he emerged as a full-blown apologist during the Pacific War, appearing on several Radio Tokyo broadcasts as a propagandist defending the interests of the state. Adopting a transnational approach that accounts for the rapid flow of information between Japan and the United States, Bo Tao examines the career of Kagawa as it unfolded within the context of the wars, imperialism, and economic depression of the early to mid-twentieth century. Using official documents and personal correspondence that have received scant attention in previous works, Tao reveals, for the first time at this level of detail, the extent of Kagawa’s cooperative relationship with the Japanese government, as well as the ways in which his idealized image was carefully constructed by his ardent missionary supporters. This book provides a window into the global dimensions of broader cultural shifts during the interwar period, such as the rise of Christian internationalism and the Depression-era popularity of cooperative economics. Offering a holistic and nuanced exploration of the tensions resulting from Kagawa’s hybrid identity as a Japanese Christian, Cooperative Evangelist adds a new layer to our understanding of religion, empire, and politics in the shaping of social and international relations. Bo Tao is Lecturer in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Chiba University in Chiba, Japan. His research interests include global history, U.S.-Japan relations, religion and politics, modern Japanese history, and the history of Christianity. Shatrunjay Mall is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He works on transnational Asian history, and his dissertation explores intellectual, political, and cultural intersections and affinities that emerged between Indian anti-colonialism and imperial Japan in the twentieth century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

For nearly two decades, the Nanzan Guide to Japanese Religions (U Hawaii Press, 2024) has served as a valuable resource for students and scholars of religion in Japan. This exciting update expands the audience to include non-specialists of Japan while also complicating the notions of "Japan" and "religion." Asking the provocative question "why study Japanese religions?" the editors argue that studying Japan is vital for the academic study of religion writ large and make a case for the continued importance of religious topics in Japan studies, broadly conceived. The volume addresses the question of why--and how--to study Japanese religions in seven sections, each overseen by a leading expert in that subfield. The section on "Knowledge Production" investigates medicine, sacred objects, and the politico-economic structures undergirding academia. "Cosmology and Time" reveals how religion shaped worldviews in both premodern and modern Japan by taking up topics such as the afterlife, divination, and relationships between science and religion. "Space and Environment" considers geography, relationships between the human and nonhuman denizens of the Japanese archipelago, and religion in Japan's overseas colonies and among diasporic outmigrants. "Feelings and Belonging" focuses on affective relationships generated through confraternities, homiletics, and caring professions. "Politics and Governance" describes longstanding relationships between religion and the state, covering everything from sacred kingship to contemporary electoral politics. The final two sections include practical advice for conducting fieldwork and helpful introductions to several relevant archives. Overall, the volume reflects the impact of recent scholarly trends in the study of Japanese religions, including material religion studies, affect theory, environmental humanities, and critical secularism studies. The breadth of topics as well as the accessibility of the individual chapters makes The New Nanzan Guide to Japanese Religions an indispensable resource for the classroom. It will be useful not only for scholars of Japan, but also for anyone interested in the academic study of religion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

Fuji: A Mountain in the Making (Princeton UP, 2025) is A panoramic biography of Japan's iconic mountain from the Ice Age to the present Mount Fuji is everywhere recognized as a wonder of nature and enduring symbol of Japan. Yet behind the picture-postcard image is a history filled with conflict and upheaval. Violent eruptions across the centuries wrought havoc and instilled fear. Long an object of worship, Fuji has been inhabited by deities that changed radically over time. It has been both a totem of national unity and a flashpoint for economic and political disputes. And while its soaring majesty has inspired countless works of literature and art, the foot of the mountain is home to military training grounds and polluting industries. Tracing the history of Fuji from its geological origins in the remote past to its recent inscription as a World Heritage Site, Andrew Bernstein explores these and other contradictions in the story of the mountain, inviting us to reflect on the relationships we share with the nonhuman world and one another. Beautifully illustrated, Fuji presents a rich portrait of one of the world's most celebrated sites, revealing a mountain forever in the making and offering a meditation on the ability of landscape both to challenge and inspire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

This sweeping history tells the story of contemporary Japan from its defeat in the Asia-Pacific War in 1945 until the early decades of the new millennium. How did the Japanese people deal with the collapse of its empire and the American-led occupation? What factors played into Japan's remarkable economic recovery and stunning affluence? How did democracy develop under the new pacifist constitution and long-term conservative rule? And how did Japanese society and culture reflect the extraordinary demographic transformations of the era? After a concise recap of events prior to 1945, historian Simon Avenell traces the country's early postwar recovery, its striking economic growth, the political and social struggles of the citizenry, the legacies of colonial empire and militarism, the profound demographic changes wrought by urbanization and affluence, the impact of regional and global entanglements, and the flowering of postwar culture. The content chapters are augmented by an introduction exploring the diverse historical interpretations of the era and its major themes, along with an epilogue pondering the prospects for Japan's postwar condition at our contemporary moment. The lively narrative is supported by a wealth of images, charts, tables, primary sources, and cutting-edge research. Drawing on recent historiography, the book presents Japan's postwar history both as a distinctive phase in the country's modern experience, as well as an era with deep connections to developments before 1945. A History of Postwar Japan will appeal to a broad readership, including students and general readers who want a comprehensive and compelling narrative of Japan's contemporary history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

In today’s episode Julia Olsson continues her talk with Dr. Chiara Rita Napolitano from last episode, and they discuss the issue of overtourism and its effect on traditional urban neighbourhoods in Kyoto. Dr. Chiara Rita Napolitano is a JSPS Postdoctoral Researcher at Kyoto university. She got her PhD from the University of Naples in 2024. Her research focuses on Japanese traditional urban dwellings, known as "machiya" (町家), and the attached concept of "seikatsu bunka" (生活文化, culture of everyday life) shaped by living in traditional houses and neighbourhoods. Julia Olsson is a PhD student at the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies at Lund University. Her dissertation project focuses on depopulation processes and the vacant house phenomenon in rural Japan. Links to Dr. Napolitano’s profiles and works: LinkedIn profile Meridiani giapponesi: Mappe, intersezioni, orientamenti Modern Kyoto research website 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/japanese-studies

Waka poetry was all the rage in tenth-century, courtly Japan. Every educated person composed it, emperors and consorts sponsored it, and societal interest in it was at an all-time high. Poets, Patrons, and the Public: Poetry as Cultural Phenomenon in Courtly Japan (Brill, 2025) offers an unprecedentedly broad and vivid portrayal of this season of literary flourishing, revealing the multitude of factors that contributed to it, as well as the social, political, and cultural reasons behind waka’s rise.Deftly combining sociological theory and social and intellectual history with insightful readings of a wealth of primary texts—some never before discussed in English—the book is both a history of waka in the Heian period and a study of Heian court society through the lens of waka. Gian Piero Persiani is Assistant Professor at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Jingyi Li is an assistant professor of Japanese Studies at Occidental College, Los Angeles. She is a cultural historian of nineteenth-century Japan. 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/japanese-studies

In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Japan sent its first diplomatic delegations to visit the popes and dignitaries of Europe. European artists portrayed these historic ambassadors—the Tenshō embassy (1582–90) and the Keichō embassy (1613–20)—in numerous oil paintings, frescoes, drawings, and prints. Envisioning Diplomacy: Japanese Ambassadors in Early Modern Europe (Pennsylvania State UP, 2025) by Dr. Mayu Fujikawa analyzes these images—including newly discovered and lost works—within their cross-cultural and diplomatic contexts. Drawing on extensive and geographically expansive archival research, art historian Dr. Fujikawa investigates how the embassies were received and either assimilated or differentiated at European courts. She demonstrates how delegates’ gifts to their hosts, their Europeanized kimonos, and the Western clothes they wore while traveling functioned as tools of soft diplomacy. Dr. Fujikawa also shows how printed materials functioned much as news does today, promoting the embassies widely and conveying information about the guests and their striking physical appearance. Envisioning Diplomacy offers a fascinating look at the political, social, and cultural meanings of visual materials created around the embassies and should be of great interest to scholars, students, and general readers interested in early modern European art and history, costume history, diplomatic history, and Japanese and global studies. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

Kyoto is known as a pinnacle of Japanese history and culture, drawing visitors of more than double its resident population many times over every year. In this and the subsequent episode we explore Kyoto neighbourhoods and the houses in them to see what transformations are happening, and what is at risk of being lost in the process. In today’s episode Dr. Chiara Rita Napolitano discusses her research on Japanese traditional urban dwellings, known as "machiya" (町家), and the attached concept of "seikatsu bunka" (生活文化, culture of everyday life) shaped by living in traditional houses and neighbourhoods. Dr. Chiara Rita Napolitano is a JSPS Postdoctoral Researcher at Kyoto university. She received her PhD from the University of Naples in 2024. Julia Olsson is a PhD student at the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies at Lund University. Her dissertation project focuses on depopulation processes and the vacant house phenomenon in rural Japan. Links to Dr. Napolitano’s profiles and works: LinkedIn profile Meridiani giapponesi: Mappe, intersezioni, orientamenti Modern Kyoto research website 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/japanese-studies

The Great Wave is perhaps the most famous piece of Japanese artwork: a roaring blue wave and three boats on the ocean. And far in the background is Mt. Fuji. And that’s actually what Hokusai’s famous woodprint is about: Mt. Fuji, volcano and Japan’s tallest mountain. Andrew Bernstein tells the story of Mt. Fuji–from its geographic origins as a violent volcano through to its present day status as Japan’s national symbol and a world heritage site—in his latest book Fuji: A Mountain In The Making(Princeton UP, 2025). Andrew is professor of history at Lewis & Clark College and the author of Modern Passings: Death Rites, Politics, and Social Change in Imperial Japan (University of Hawaii Press: 2006) You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Fuji. 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/japanese-studies

Driven by extensive Japanese primary sources, Gamble in the Coral Sea: Japan's Offensive, the Carrier Battle, and the Road to Midway (Naval Institute Press, 2025) offers an operational analysis of the first clash of aircraft carriers at the pivotal Battle of the Coral Sea from the Japanese perspective, including leadership, tactics, and errors that brought a numeric victory but a strategic loss for Japan that halted their bold advance into the South Pacific and ultimately set the stage for Midway. The opening salvos of the Battle of the Coral Sea, the first large-scale carrier clash in history, were fired one month before Midway. Gamble in the Coral Sea recounts, for the first time in English, the story of this battle from the Japanese point of view. Based on extensive Japanese-language sources, author Michal A. Piegzik forcefully challenges established Western narratives surrounding this critical engagement in the Pacific War. Operation MO, the Japanese plan to seize Port Moresby, kicked off in early May 1942. By committing three carriers, including the famous Shōkaku and Zuikaku, the Nippon Kaigun's command risked a critical part of their fleet just before the envisaged decisive battle at Midway in the Central Pacific, scheduled for early July. The operation was considered a vital part of Japanese strategy. Victory would isolate Australia and New Zealand and extend access to vital resources crucial to Japan's war effort. Victory, however, would prove elusive after American codebreakers deciphered Japanese radio traffic that revealed their plans in the weeks leading up to the launch of Operation MO. Using this intelligence to their advantage, U.S forces located elements of the Japanese navy as they steamed through the Coral Sea. Soon after, history's first carrier battle began. Piegzik combines expertise in military history with mastery of the Japanese language to provide a rare perspective on the Imperial Japanese Navy's operational choices during the battle. His use of Japanese archival documents and personal testimonies from surviving Japanese crew members uncovers new dimensions to the battle. The clash proved to be a Pyrrhic victory for the Japanese, who sunk the Lexington and crippled the Yorktown but were forced to call off Operation MO due to the severe damage inflicted on Shōkaku and the heavy losses among their aircrews. Revealed here are the circumstances and actual reasons for the Japanese failure and the revised impact of the Battle of the Coral Sea on the Battle of Midway. Beyond tactical details, Piegzik offers insight into the broader consequences of the battle. He engages with sources previously underexplored and integrates them with Allied perspectives to ensure a well-rounded understanding of the events. A vital addition to any World War II collection, Gamble in the Coral Sea offers a nuanced and thorough exploration of a battle that significantly shaped the trajectory of the war in the Pacific. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

Centering collaborations and frictions around a Japanese town’s pottery industry, Crafting Rural Japan: Traditional Potters and Rural Creativity in Regional Revitalization (Routledge, 2024)n discusses the place of creative village policy in the revitalization of rural Japan, highlighting how rural Japan is moving from a state of regional extinction to regional rejuvenation. Using the case study of Tamba Sasayama in Hyogo Prefecture, where collective initiatives by local government and the role of the local traditional potters are invested in fostering an aura of creativity in the region, the book examines the complex social relations and the intertwining values of different actors to illustrate how a growing outlook on creativity, rurality, and rural creativity requires a renewed perspective on and of rural Japan. Based on extensive field research, Crafting Rural Japan will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of Japanese studies, rural studies, and anthropology. Shilla Lee is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institut für Modernes Japan, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf. Her work explores contemporary craft and its entanglements with social change and post-growth perspectives emerging from rural Japan. Yadong Li is a socio-cultural anthropologist-in-training. He is registered as a PhD student at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of political ecology, critical development studies, and the anthropology of time. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies