New Books In East Asian Studies

The Visual Culture of Meiji Japan: Negotiating the Transition to Modernity (Routledge, 2021) examines the visual culture of Japan's transition to modernity, from 1868 to the first decades of the twentieth century. Through this important moment in Japanese history, contributors reflect on Japan's transcultural artistic imagination vis-a-vis the discernment, negotiation, assimilation, and assemblage of diverse aesthetic concepts and visual pursuits. The collected chapters show how new cultural notions were partially modified and integrated to become the artistic methods of modern Japan, based on the hybridization of major ideologies, visualities, technologies, productions, formulations, and modes of representation. The book presents case studies of creative transformation demonstrating how new concepts and methods were perceived and altered to match views and theories prevalent in Meiji Japan, and by what means different practitioners negotiated between their existing skills and the knowledge generated from inc

Translation of Contemporary Taiwan Literature in a Cross-Cultural Context (Routledge, 2021) explores the social, cultural, and linguistic implications of translation of Taiwan literature for transnational cultural exchange. It demonstrates principally how asymmetrical cultural relationships, mediation processes, and ideologies of the translation players constitute the culture-specific translation activity as a highly contested site, where translation can reconstruct and rewrite the literature and the culture it represents. Four main theoretical themes are explored in relation to such translation activity: sociological studies, cultural and rewriting studies, English as a lingua franca, and social and performative linguistics. These offer insightful perspectives on the translation as an interpretive encounter between not only two languages, two cultural systems and assumptions taking place, but also among various translation mediators. This book will be useful to scholars and students working on translation an

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

Hong Kong is almost impossible to explain to those not from the city. Too often, the city has had to struggle with shorthand used by those writing about the city from afar—for audiences with little understanding of what the place is actually like. The Impossible City: A Hong Kong Memoir (Random House: 2022) by Karen Cheung is a deep dive into the things that make Hong Kong different, diverse and difficult. In this interview, Karen and I talk about Hong Kong—the home city for both of us—and what it means to grow up in such a dense, unsure and misunderstood place. Karen Cheung (karen-cheung.com) is a writer and journalist from Hong Kong. Her essays, cultural criticism, and reported features have appeared on This American Life and in The New York Times, Foreign Policy, and other publications. She was formerly a reporter at Hong Kong Free Press and was co–founding editor of Still / Loud, an indie magazine about culture and music in Hong Kong. Karen can be followed on Twitter at @karenklcheung. You can find more r

This introduction to Tanabe Hajime (1885-1962), the critical successor of the “father of contemporary Japanese philosophy” Nishida Kitaro (1870–1945), focuses on Hajime's central philosophical ideas and perspective on “self,” “world,” “knowledge,” and the “purpose of philosophizing”. Exploring his notable philosophical ideas including the logic of species, metanoetics, and philosophy of death, it addresses his life-long study of the history of Western philosophy. It sets out his belief that Western framework of thinking is incapable of giving sufficient answers to the philosophical questions concerning the self and the world together and discusses the central ideas he developed while working in Eastern traditions such as Confucianism and Daoism. Featuring comprehensive further reading lists, discussion questions and teaching notes, Tanabe Hajime and the Kyoto School: Self, World, and Knowledge (Bloomsbury, 2021) is an ideal introductory guide to Tanabe Hajime suitable for anyone interested in Japanese and Wor

The continuing crisis in Xinjiang has, thanks to the work of many scholars and reporters, led to greatly increased awareness of the region's history and Uyghur population among publics outside China. But so far less appreciated have been the specific ways in which the targeted regime of Uyghur imprisonment operates, and its creeping emergence over the course of the 2010s. Darren Byler’s Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City (Duke UP, 2022) is therefore a vital addition to our understanding of this emergency. Based on long-term fieldwork in Urumqi and elsewhere, this is a chilling and deeply moving portrait of processes of dispossession and ‘reeducation’ whose advance has intensified since the 2014 onset of what the Chinese government calls the ‘People’s War on Terror’. Combining ethnographic nuance with piercing insight into grand colonial processes, Byler both offers an encompassing theory of the technological, economic and political forces which have brought this situatio

After the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, history under him was retold: for example, the Cultural Revolution was rebranded as “Ten Years of Chaos” and its policies were deemed “ultra-left.” In comparison to these changes in national narratives, how was the local history of Tibet under Mao retold after his death and in the subsequent decades of economic reform? To answer this question, the edited volume Conflicting Memories: Tibetan History under Mao Retold (Brill, 2020) explores the writings of a range of both Han-Chinese and Tibetan writers, including official historians, unofficial autobiographers, memoirists, filmmakers, fiction-writers, and oral raconteurs. In addition to providing translated extracts from their work, the volume contains chapters of essays by renowned scholars of modern Tibetan history discussing the narratives produced, what types of people were producing them, what means they used, what aims they pursued, and in what ways did Tibetan accounts differ from those of Han-Chinese writers. Rober

What is “binary nationalism” and what has it got to do with free-style skiing? The explosive popularity of Eileen Gu’s is an excellent case for understanding the common Chinese mindset. In this conversation, Professor Julie Yu-Wen Chen is joined by Professor Jiang Chang to discuss the wide popularity of freestyle skier Eileen Gu during and after the 2022 Winter Olympics. Jiang Chang will share his unique insight into Gu’s rise to a new kind of poster child in China, while at the same time, he cautions us to be mindful of the invisible hand (i.e., Chinese propaganda) in shaping Gu’s popularity. For most Chinese people, the primary framework for their perception and interpretation of the world is what Chang terms “binary nationalism.” It is nationalism, but it is very simple and is intended to be simple. In that framework, the US is the default opposite of China. Meanwhile, there has been an astonishing rise of a kind of “hero-worshiping” social atmosphere since Xi Jinping rose to power in China, where common p

This groundbreaking book examines the role of rulers with nomadic roots in transforming the great societies of Eurasia, especially from the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries. Distinguished historian Pamela Kyle Crossley, drawing on the long history of nomadic confrontation with Eurasia’s densely populated civilizations, argues that the distinctive changes we associate with modernity were founded on vernacular literature and arts, rising literacy, mercantile and financial economies, religious dissidence, independent learning, and self-legitimating rulership. Crossley finds that political traditions of Central Asia insulated rulers from established religious authority and promoted the objectification of cultural identities marked by language and faith, which created a mutual encouragement of cultural and political change. As religious and social hierarchies weakened, political centralization and militarization advanced. But in the spheres of religion and philosophy, iconoclasm enjoyed a new life. The changes cu

Policymakers worry that "ungoverned spaces" pose dangers to security and development. Why do such spaces exist beyond the authority of the state? Earlier scholarship—which addressed this question with a list of domestic failures—overlooked the crucial role that international politics play. In this shrewd book, Melissa M. Lee argues that foreign subversion undermines state authority and promotes ungoverned space. Enemy governments empower insurgents to destabilize the state and create ungoverned territory. This kind of foreign subversion is a powerful instrument of modern statecraft. But though subversion is less visible and less costly than conventional force, it has insidious effects on governance in the target state. To demonstrate the harmful consequences of foreign subversion for state authority, Crippling Leviathan: How Foreign Subversion Weakens the State (Cornell University Press, 2020) marshals a wealth of evidence and presents in-depth studies of Russia's relations with the post-Soviet states, Malays

At the end of the Second World War, about 600,000 Japanese soldiers were taken prisoner after the Soviet Union swept through Manchuria in the very final days of the war. Instead of returning them to Japan, the Soviet Union held them in prison camps in the Russian Far East for over a decade. The last group was released in 1956, eleven years after the Japanese surrender. Those eleven years are the subject of Eleven Winters of Discontent: The Siberian Internment and the Making of a New Japan (Harvard University Press, 2022) by Dr. Sherzod Muminov. The book tells the story of the Japanese prisoners: how they were captured, their time in the camps, and how they tried to acclimatize to Japan after their release. Sherzod Muminov is a Lecturer in Japanese History at the University of East Anglia and winner of the inaugural Murayama Tsuneo Memorial Prize. He is a historian of transnational and international processes in East Asia and Eurasia, whose primary research deals with Japan’s makings as a modern nation from th

Launched in 2013 by Chinese President XI Jinping, China’s Belt and Road initiative has manifested throughout Southeast Asia in the form of multibillion dollar investments in transport infrastructure, industrial estates and other forms of “hard” development. This push for trade and hard infrastructure has been accompanied by a surge in various soft power initiatives, including the use of religion as a cultural resource. Joining Dr Natali Pearson on SSEAC Stories, Dr Gregory Raymond sheds light on the use of religion, in particular Buddhism, within the great geopolitical strategy of China’s Belt and Road Initiative across mainland Southeast Asia. About Gregory Raymond: Gregory Raymond is a lecturer in the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs researching Southeast Asian politics and foreign relations. He is the author of Thai Military Power: A Culture of Strategic Accommodation (NIAS Press 2018) and the lead author of The United States-Thai Alliance: History, Memory and Current Developments (Routledge, 2021

Ayse Zarakol, Professor of International Relations at the University of Cambridge, is the author of Before the West: The Rise and Fall of Eastern World Orders (Cambridge University Press, 2022). Before the West offers a grand narrative of (Eur)Asia as a space connected by normatively and institutionally overlapping successive world orders originating from the Mongol Empire. It uses that vast history to rethink the foundational concepts and debates of international relations, such as order and decline. How would the history of international relations in 'the East' be written if we did not always read the ending - the Rise of the West and the decline of the East - into the past? What if we did not assume that Asia was just a residual category, a variant of 'not-Europe', but saw it as a space with its own particular history and sociopolitical dynamics, not defined only by encounters with European colonialism? How would our understanding of sovereignty, as well as our theories about the causes of the decline of G

South Korean presidential election ended and the conservative party candidate, Yoon Suk-yeol won the election. How will he balance the relationships between Korea and the US and China? The current progressive Moon Jae-in administration has pursued strategic ambiguity in foreign policy, trying to maintain a strong alliance relationship with the US while pursuing an economic partnership with China. During the campaign, Yoon promised that he will reverse the Moon’s foreign policy and pursue strategic clarity, emphasizing security concerns in the Korean Peninsula. In this episode, Dr. Sungmin Cho shares his expertise on South and North Korea’s relations with China, North Korea’s newly posed threats this year, and the security dynamics surrounding the Korean Peninsula. Dr. Sungmin Cho is a professor of the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, an academic institute of the US Department of Defense, based in Hawaii. His area of expertise covers China-Korean Peninsula relations, North Korea’s nuc

Once viewed as an embarrassing superstition, the theatrical religious performances of Korean shamans--who communicate with the dead, divine the future, and become possessed--are going mainstream. Attitudes toward Korean shamanism are changing as shamanic traditions appear in staged rituals, museums, films, and television programs, as well as on the internet.  In Contemporary Korean Shamanism: From Ritual to Digital (Indiana University Press, 2021), Liora Sarfati explores this vernacular religion and practice, which includes sensory rituals using laden altars, ecstatic dance, and animal sacrifice, within South Korea's hypertechnologized society, where over 200,000 shamans are listed in professional organizations. In doing so, Sarfati reveals how representations of shamanism in national, commercialized, and screen-mediated settings have transformed opinions of these religious practitioners and their rituals. Applying ethnography and folklore research, Contemporary Korean Shamanism maps this shift in perception

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shaken the ground of global politics, and one of the key questions has been China’s position in the situation. In this episode, Dr. Matti Puranen analyses China’s international relations and strategic position in the context of the Ukraine crisis and China’s relationship with Russia. The newfound Western unity in response to the situation may also complicate China’s relations with Finland. According to Dr. Puranen, Finland’s traditionally good relationship with China has already shown some signs of cooling in recent years. We also discuss the implications of the current situation for Taiwan and China’s overall visions regarding the existing international order. Read Dr. Puranen’s article “Sino-Russian Relations Already Bear Signs of a Military Alliance” (with Juha Kukkola) in the National Interest and his articles “Finland’s China Shift” (with Jukka Aukia) and “China-Finland: Beijing’s ‘Model Relationship’ in Europe?” in The Diplomat. Matti Puranen is a Senior Researcher at th

The Mongol period (1206-1368) marked a major turning point of exchange - culturally, politically, and artistically - across Eurasia. The wide-ranging international exchange that occurred during the Mongol period is most apparent visually through the inclusion of Mongol motifs in textile, paintings, ceramics, and metalwork, among other media. In  In Mongol Court Dress, Identity Formation, and Global Exchange (Routledge, 2020), Eiren Shea investigates how a group of newly-confederated tribes from the steppe conquered the most sophisticated societies in existence in less than a century, creating a courtly idiom that permanently changed the aesthetics of China and whose echoes were felt across Central Asia, the Middle East, and even Europe.  Eiren Shea is Assistant Professor of Art History at Grinnell College. Tanja Tolar is a Senior Teaching Fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member!

Tens of thousands of characters. Countless homonyms. Mutually unintelligible dialects across an entire country. This is what faced the Chinese thinkers, inventors and technicians who had to figure out how to standardize, translate, and adapt the Chinese language for a new country, and for new technologies. Professor Jing Tsu’s Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution that Made China Modern (Riverhead Books, 2022) tells the stories of those who worked to transform Chinese for the 20th century. In this interview, Jing and I talk about thinkers and technicians: those who toiled to make the Chinese language work for typewriters, telegraphs, and other important technologies. Jing Tsu is the John M. Schiff Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures and Comparative Literature and Chair of the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale. She specializes in Chinese literature, history, and culture from the nineteenth century to the present, and received her doctorate in Chinese studies from Harvard. A Guggenhei

When we think of pre-Buddhism Chinese philosophy, ideas such as filial piety and “the Dao” might come to mind. But what was at stake in the philosophical debates of early Chinese thinkers, from Confucius to Zhuangzi? What were the epistemic legacies that they have left for the world? In Origins of Moral Political Philosophy in Early China (Oxford University Press 2021), Tao Jiang remaps the intellectual landscape of early Chinese philosophy (6th to 2nd centuries BCE) and reveals that most if not all of the classical Chinese philosophers, from Confucius to Zhuangzi, engaged with the three ideas of humaneness, justice, and personal freedom in one way or another to construct their visions of the world. By charting the trajectory of core philosophical values in early China and beyond, Jiang makes the case in the book that the philosophical dialectics between the partialist humaneness and the impartialist justice formed the fundamental dynamics underlying the mainstream moral-political project of early China, with

Based on longitudinal ethnographic work on migration between the United States and Taiwan, Time and Migration: How Long-Term Taiwanese Migrants Negotiate Later Life (Cornell UP, 2021) interrogates how long-term immigrants negotiate their needs as they grow older and how transnational migration shapes later-life transitions. Ken Chih-Yan Sun develops the concept of a “temporalities of migration” to examine the interaction between space, place, and time. He demonstrates how long-term settlement in the United States, coupled with changing homeland contexts, has inspired aging immigrants and returnees to rethink their sense of social belonging, remake intimate relations, and negotiate opportunities and constraints across borders. The interplay between migration and time shapes the ways aging migrant populations reassess and reconstruct relationships with their children, spouses, grandchildren, community members, and home, as well as host societies. Aging, Sun argues, is a global issue and must be reconsidered in