Thinking of leaving the country? Does the life of a digital nomad beckon to you? Suzanne Kamata has been there, done that, and is still doing it. Living in Japan for most of her adult life, she has a husband, two children, and a string of books to her credit. Her latest, Owls in the…
Can food determine your fate? Could indulging in delicacies bring calamity to your community? Joshua Schlachet’s Nourishing Life reevaluates the history of Japanese food culture by examining how ideas of healthy eating became both a popular phenomenon and a matter of grave concern among trained medical experts and amateur culinary enthusiasts alike. Beginning in the…
Lavishly illustrated, Samurai explores the reality and myths of the samurai from medieval times to today’s popular culture through objects from international collections. Essays by scholars throughout the book discuss the warrior class’s historical origins in the medieval period’s civil wars and stories they told of their own achievements. Although the samurai social class was…
Observing the Unseen explores how literate and marginally literate people in China between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries investigated the invisible, the ubiquitous, and the inexplicable. Whether through medical encyclopedias, daily-use almanacs, or novels and anecdotes, readers pursued knowledge of the natural world with curiosity shaped as much by wonder as by empiricism. Rather than privileging…
This collection of eleven essays explores emotions and affect in Korean culture across a broad temporal span, from the Koryŏ dynasty (918–1392) to the present. Drawing on a diverse array of sources—including memoirs, diplomatic letters, newspapers, films, video diaries, photographs, and ethnographic interviews—the volume examines how emotions intervene in public discourse and how affect is…
This groundbreaking study examines the poetry of Yang Mu, a pivotal Taiwanese writer who used Chinese literary forms to challenge Sinocentric narratives during Taiwan’s White Terror and democratization. Drawing on postcolonial theory and close reading, it explores his poetic use of ambivalence, mimicry, and minor narrative to resist cultural hegemony and reclaim historical memory.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, racist demagoguery fomented a campaign of terror against Asian Americans. But these attacks were part of a much longer pattern that made anti-Asian racism integral to the outbreak of white supremacist, misogynist, and colonial violence across 175 years of US history. Written in the radical spirit of Howard Zinn, American Peril…
Wu Ming-Yi is one of Taiwan’s most celebrated contemporary writers, whose work bridges literature, environmental thought, and history with a global perspective. The Wu Ming-Yi Companion, edited by Michael Berry and Kuei-fen Chiu, is the first comprehensive volume in English dedicated to his oeuvre, offering new scholarship from leading researchers across Taiwan, Hong Kong, North…
Lyrical Translation is a literary history of modern Korean poetry’s origins and its development through translation. As the use of Korean became increasingly restricted during the Japanese occupation, translation was not a choice but a necessity for higher education and intellectual labor. Yet it also had an expansive, creative function: Korean poets wielded it as…
On April 15, 2014, the Sewol ferry departed from Incheon, bound for Jeju Island, with 476 people onboard. After receiving a distress call, authorities urged the crew to prepare for evacuation. Instead, passengers were told to stay in their cabins and wait for help. Most died waiting for rescue.
The volume presents a set of keywords and concepts embedded in the languages of South Asia and its vast cultural landscape. It reiterates specific attitudes, ways of seeing and methods of doing, which are embedded in the historical and contemporary experiences in the region. The words, concepts, ideas and attitudes in this volume explore the…
Arguing for the importance of taking Japanese political thought seriously, this book is the first to bring together authoritative essays by world experts on the thinkers who shaped Japan’s New Left movement. In doing so, it demonstrates the distinctiveness and significance of Japanese left-wing thought, providing an invaluable resource for students of 20th-century radical politics.
Keith Dalton was a journalist with foreign correspondent dreams. He had them as a 10-year-old. They never went away. Dalton was 25 when he crammed a typewriter in his backpack and set off from Australia to Southeast Asia, convinced he could be a self-made foreign correspondent. Writing as he went, Dalton took buses, trucks, trains, planes,…
Cross-border Intimacies is a powerful account of the experiences of migrant women and their families between China and Taiwan. Since the early 1990s, economic exchanges between the two countries have paved the way to migration and sociocultural interaction across a previously closed border.
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…