New Books In East Asian Studies

The early twentieth century was a particularly tumultuous time in Chinese history, complete with new conflicts, new technologies, and — as Portrayals of Women in Early Twentieth-Century China: Redefining Female Identity through Modern Design and Lifestyle (Amsterdam University Press, 2024) shows — new ways to represent women.  Portrayals of Women in Early Twentieth-Century China by Sandy Ng looks at how women were portrayed in advertisements, photographs, and film in Republican China, all against the backdrop of the rise of print and visual media and debates over the role and image of “modern” women. This book argues that visual portrayals of women not only displayed women, but that such modern images of women allowed women to assert their own individual identities. Filled with images from collections in the UK, Hong Kong, and the United States, this book is sure to interest readers curious about modern Chinese history and the history of design, as well as anyone looking to be inspired by art and material cul

In this episode, our host Lara Momesso interviews Yi-Fan Feng (馮一凡), the Deputy Chief Executive at Harmony Home Taiwan, to discuss the work that Harmony Home has done with some of the most marginalised people in Taiwan: people living with HIV/AIDS and undocumented residents and their children. In this chat, Lara and Yi-Fan explore how more than 40 years of activities by Harmony Home have contributed not only to help people living with HIV/AIDS and undocumented residents but also to change the way the Taiwanese government and society approached these groups. If you want to know more about Harmony Home, what they do and how to support it, follow this link: www.twhhf.org If you want to watch the documentary movie mentioned in the interview, Mimi’s Utopia, follow this link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjVfVEl58WU 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 Chosŏn dynasty of Korea enjoyed generally peaceful and stable relations with Ming China, a relationship that was carefully cultivated and achieved only through the strategic deployment of cultural practices, values, and narratives by Chosŏn political actors. Boundless Winds of Empire: Rhetoric and Ritual in Early Chosŏn Diplomacy with Ming China (Columbia UP 2023) explores this history, rethinking how we understand Sino-Korean relations.   Boundless Winds of Empire is detailed, rich, and filled with a fascinating range of sources, including poetry, travelogues, epistolary writings, and literary anthologies. Sixiang Wang deftly weaves together these sources, highlighting the key role envoys played in shaping diplomatic strategy, the agency of Chosŏn officials, and the contested nature of the Ming empire. The 2024 winner of the UC Berkeley Hong Yung Lee Book Award in Korean Studies, this book should appeal to those interested in Chinese and Korean studies, international relations, premodern history, and any

In 2019, journalist and writer Peter Hessler traveled with his family to China. He’d gotten a gig as a teacher of writing—nonfiction writing in particular—in what he’d hoped would be a sequel to his 2001 book River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze. But plans changed—radically. At the very end of 2019, the COVID-19 virus emerges in Wuhan, leading to chaos as officials frantically try to figure out how to control the new disease. Peter’s reporting first wins his criticism from Chinese nationalists angry about his frank discussions of China’s mistakes—then criticism from U.S. hawks angry that Hessler gives Beijing credit for what it managed to do right as COVID rapidly spreads around the world. Peter’s years in China are covered in his latest book Other Rivers: A Chinese Education (Penguin Press, 2024), published last year. Peter Hessler is a staff writer at the New Yorker, where he served as Beijing correspondent from 2000 to 2007, Cairo correspondent from 2011 to 2016, and Chengdu correspondent from 2019 to 202

One of the most famous rulers in Chinese history, the Yongle emperor (r. 1402–24) gained renown for constructing Beijing’s magnificent Forbidden City, directing ambitious naval expeditions, and creating the world’s largest encyclopedia. What the Emperor Built: Architecture and Empire in the Early Ming (U Washington Press, 2020) is the first book-length study devoted to the architectural projects of a single Chinese emperor. Focusing on the imperial palaces in Beijing, a Daoist architectural complex on Mount Wudang, and a Buddhist temple on the Sino-Tibetan frontier, Aurelia Campbell demonstrates how the siting, design, and use of Yongle’s palaces and temples helped cement his authority and legitimize his usurpation of power. Campbell offers insight into Yongle’s sense of empire—from the far-flung locations in which he built, to the distant regions from which he extracted construction materials, and to the use of tens of thousands of craftsmen and other laborers. Through his constructions, Yongle connected him

In the late nineteenth century, as much of the world adopted some variant of the gold standard, China remained the most populous country still using silver. Yet China had no unified national currency; there was not one monetary standard but many. Silver coins circulated alongside chunks of silver and every transaction became an "encounter of wits." China and the End of Global Silver, 1873–1937 (Cornell UP, 2020) focuses on how officials, policy makers, bankers, merchants, academics, and journalists in China and around the world answered a simple question: how should China change its monetary system? Far from a narrow, technical issue, Chinese monetary reform is a dramatic story full of political revolutions, economic depressions, chance, and contingency. As different governments in China attempted to create a unified monetary standard in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the United States, England, and Japan tried to shape the direction of Chinese monetary reform for their own benefit.  Austin

In Utopian Ruins: A Memorial Museum of the Mao Era (Duke University Press, 2020) Jie Li traces the creation, preservation, and elision of memories about China's Mao era by envisioning a virtual museum that reckons with both its utopian yearnings and its cataclysmic reverberations.  Li proposes a critical framework for understanding the documentation and transmission of the socialist past that mediates between nostalgia and trauma, anticipation and retrospection, propaganda and testimony. Assembling each chapter like a memorial exhibit, Li explores how corporeal traces, archival documents, camera images, and material relics serve as commemorative media. Prison writings and police files reveal the infrastructure of state surveillance and testify to revolutionary ideals and violence, victimhood and complicity.  Photojournalism from the Great Leap Forward and documentaries from the Cultural Revolution promoted faith in communist miracles while excluding darker realities, whereas Mao memorabilia collections, facto

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 the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the entrance of the Soviet Union into the war. In the end, the surrender itself fulfilled the commitment that Franklin Roosevelt had made that it be "unconditional," as had been the case with Nazi Germany in May, 1945.  Though readily accepted as war policy at the time, after Roosevelt's death in April 1945, popular support for unconditional surrender wavered, particularly when the bloody campaigns on Iwo Jima and Okinawa made clear the cost of military victory against Japan. The ending of the war in Europe spurred calls in Congress, particularly among anti-New Deal Republi

North Korea is, to this day, still one of the world’s most mysterious countries. What little we know about daily life in the country comes from defectors or foreigners who’ve spent time there–some of whom have been on this show. But both camps present narrow, if not slanted, views of what life is like in the country. Korea expert Victor Cha, along with several other researchers, have put together a collection that tries to tackle the topic of North Korea with a more rigorous approach, in The Black Box: Demystifying the Study of Korean Unification and North Korea (Columbia University Press: 2024) What do we know about North Korea’s cyberwarfare capability? Do U.S.-South Korea military exercises really cause North Korean belligerence? What do ordinary North Koreans believe? And what do U.S. and South Korean experts think are their “known unknowns” when it comes to North Korea? Victor D. Cha is Distinguished University Professor, D.S. Song-KF Endowed Chair, and professor of government in the Walsh School of Fore

If tales of China’s radical ‘opening up’ to the world over the last 30 years imply that the country was somehow ‘closed’ before this, then one need only think of Beijing’s dalliances with various potential socialist allies during the Cold War to dispel this impression. There is, moreover, another equally important case in which people linked to ‘China’ were involved in transnational affairs at this time – namely that of overseas Chinese populations throughout the world. And, as Taomo Zhou’s fascinating Indonesia-centred account shows, in Southeast Asia the Chinese outside China were intimately entangled in a vast among of what was going on at this time on the diplomatic and political level. Drawing on a trove of archival and fieldwork-derived material from multiple locations, Zhou’s Migration in the Time of Revolution: China, Indonesia and the Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2019) presents a rich account of the Indonesian-Chinese population’s involvement in regional and global affairs, mainly between the

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Brynn Quick speaks with Dr. Alexandra Grey about Dr. Grey’s book entitled Language Rights in a Changing China: A National Overview and Zhuang Case Study (De Gruyter, 2021). China has had constitutional minority language rights for decades, but what do they mean today? Answering with nuance and empirical detail, this book examines the rights through a sociolinguistic study of Zhuang, the language of China’s largest minority group. The analysis traces language policy from the Constitution to local government practices, investigating how Zhuang language rights are experienced as opening or restricting socioeconomic opportunity. The study finds that language rights do not challenge ascendant marketised and mobility-focused language ideologies which ascribe low value to Zhuang. However, people still value a Zhuang identity validated by government policy and practice. Rooted in a Bourdieusian approach to language, power and legal discourse, this is the first majo

Many authors have written about the Manila Galleons, the massive ships that took goods back and forth between Acapulco and Manila, ferrying silver one way, and Chinese-made goods the other. But how did the Galleons actually work? Who paid for them? How did buyers and sellers negotiate with each other? Who set the rules? Why on earth did the shippers decide to send just one galleon a year? Juan José Rivas Moreno dives into these questions in his book The Capital Market of Manila and the Pacific Trade, 1668-1838: Institutions and Trade during the First Globalization (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). Juan José Rivas Moreno is a historian of early modern finance, specialising in the financing of the Pacific trade. He obtained his PhD in Economic History from London School of Economics in 2023 with a thesis on the capital market of Manila which received the Coleman Prize 2024. Juan José was the recipient of a Newberry Library short-term fellowship and held an Economic History Society Fellowship in 2023-2024. Currently h

Death and Funeral Practices in Japan (Routledge, 2024) is an essential introductory text an often overlooked element of cultural expression. The books offers a succinct history to the development of funeral practices over time, and describes a typical contemporary funeral in detail. Japanese funerals reflect the strength of continuing ancestor veneration (senzo kuyō), but face the challenge of high-density urbanisation and and reduction in family size which can lead to  isolation at the time of death. The text explains new trends in funeral practices, including ‘tree burials’ and ‘eternal memorial graves’. This information is supported by material on religious, legal and governance frameworks. This text is part of an extended series of handbooks that gives the reader a clear and accessible introduction to funeral practices in countries all over the world. In this podcast, Julie Rugg of the UK's Cemetery Research Group talks to Hannah Gould about a surprising funeral culture that merges deep tradition and high

In this episode, our host Lara Momesso interviews Dr Isabelle Cockel, an academic based in the UK, to discuss the wider impact of her academic work. Isabelle’s extensive research on marriage and labour migrants in Taiwan has evolved into efforts to raise awareness of migrant issues beyond the academic sphere both in Asia and Europe. She has written blogs featuring migrant voices, translated and promoted films about migrants, and, whenever possible, she has worked to assist migrants in Taiwan. For those who are interested to know more about Isabelle’s work, here you can find some links: University of Portsmouth profile Migrant Biographies, series on the Blog at Leiden University:  Movie translation: The Lovable Strangers by Tsung-Lung Tsai and Nguyễn Kim Hồng  Taiwan Insight at the University of Nottingham 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

For more than 70 years, South Korea has woven the threat of North Korea into daily life. But now that threat has become mundane, and South Korean national security addresses family, public health, and national unity. Banal Security: Queer Korea in the Time of Viruses (Helsinki University Press, 2023) illustrates how as a result, queer Koreans are seen to represent a viral threat to national security. Taking readers from police stations and the Constitutional Court to queer activist offices and pride festivals, Timothy Gitzen shows how security weaves through daily life and diffuses the queer threat, in a context where queer Koreans are treated as viral carriers, disruptions to public order, and threats to family and culture. Timothy Gitzen is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Wake Forest University. Qing Shen recently obtained his PhD in anthropology from Uppsala University, Sweden. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://ne

Predicting Disasters: Earthquakes, Scientists, and Uncertainty in Modern Japan (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024) takes seriously attempts to reduce uncertainty around the timing, magnitude, and location of earthquakes in postwar Japan. Covering the period between early warnings about earthquakes in 1905 right up until the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, Kerry Smith explores the different ways scientists in Japan tried to predict earthquakes, how they sought to communicate their efforts to the public, and how understandings of disasters changed in turn. Smith thus carefully embeds each earthquake within its historical context, looking at how people reacted to individual earthquakes and how each earthquake fueled further efforts to understand seismology and plan for disasters. Predicting Disasters is meticulous, thoughtful, and provides new, historically grounded understandings of how earthquakes are approached in Japan today and why the promise of prediction has never quite left Japan. Predicting D

To the untrained eye there’s nothing as unexciting as tofu, normally regarded as a tasteless, beige, congealed mass of crushed, boiled soybeans. However, tofu more than stands up on its own. Reviled for decades as a vegetarian oddity, the brave, wobbly block has made a comeback. Tofu: a Culinary History (Reaktion, 2024) by Russell Thomas is a global history of bean curd stretches from ancient creation myths and tomb paintings, via Chinese poetry and Japanese Buddhist cuisine, to deportations in Soviet Russia and struggles for power on the African continent. It describes the potentially non-Chinese roots of tofu, its myriad types, why ‘eating tofu’ is an insult in Cantonese, and its environmental impact today. Warning: this book actually makes tofu exciting. It’s anything but bland. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan a

In this episode, our host, Ti-han, invited Taiwanese Queer author, Kevin Chen, to talk about his LGBTQ novel, Ghost Town (Europa Editions, 2022) 鬼地方 and its fever worldwide. In our conversation, Kevin shared with us how he first “come out” as a gay writer in Taiwan in the 90s, and how his writings was influenced by key Taiwanese LGBTQ authors and continue to be shaped by his migratory experiences in Berlin. He also told us how he thinks translation and the transability of a literary work can be useful in terms of authors’ impacts on society. If you’re a fan of Kevin’s writing, you certainly can’t miss this episode! 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 China Business Conundrum: Ensure That "Win-Win" Doesn't Mean Western Companies Lose Twice (Wiley, 2024) describes former CEO of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) Ken Wilcox's firsthand challenges he encountered in four years “on the ground” trying to establish a joint venture between SVB and the Chinese government to fund local innovation design―and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) efforts to systematically sabotage the project and steal SVB's business model. This book provides actionable advice drawn from meticulous notes Wilcox took from interviews with people from all walks of Chinese life, including Party and non-Party members, the business elite, and domestic workers. Describing a China he found fascinating and maddeningly complex, this book explores topics including: Difficulties in transplanting SVB's model to China, from misunderstandings about titles and responsibilities to pitched battles over toilet design Ethics and practices widely adopted by Chinese businesses today and why China must be met with

The redistribution of political and economic rights is inherently unequal in autocratic societies. Autocrats routinely divide their populations into included and excluded groups, creating particularistic citizenship through granting some groups access to rights and redistribution while restricting or denying access to others. This book asks: why would a government with powerful tools of exclusion expand access to socioeconomic citizenship rights? And when autocratic systems expand redistribution, whom do they choose to include? In Manipulating Authoritarian Citizenship: Security, Development, and Local Membership in China (Stanford UP, 2024), Samantha A. Vortherms examines the crucial case of China—where internal citizenship regimes control who can and cannot become a local citizen through the household registration system (hukou)—and uncovers how autocrats use such institutions to create particularistic membership in citizenship. Vortherms shows how local governments explicitly manipulate local citizenship m