New Books In East Asian Studies

When one thinks of the connection of religion and imperialism in Japan, one automatically thinks first of Shintoism and second of Buddhism. Christianity does not usually figure into that story. However, Emily Anderson, in her new book Christianity and Imperialism in Modern Japan: Empire for God (Bloomsbury, 2014), shows how...Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Archaeology of Tibetan Books (Brill, 2014), Agnieszka Helman-Wazny explores the varieties of artistic expression, materials, and tools that have shaped Tibetan books over the millennia. Digging into the history of the bookmaking craft, the author approaches these ancient texts primarily through the lens of their artistry, while simultaneously showing...Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wen Jin’s book, Pluralist Universalism: An Asian Americanist Critique of U.S. and Chinese Multiculturalisms (Ohio State Press, 2012), compares histories and modes of multiculturalism in China and the United States. Whereas many see few correlations between China’s ethnic policies and the multiculturalist policies of the U.S., Wen Jin brings these...Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tanya Storch‘s recent book, The History of Chinese Buddhist Bibliography: Censorship and Transformation of the Tripitaka (Cambria, 2014), focuses on the development of Chinese Buddhist catalogs from their first appearance in the third century to the eighth century, when printed editions of the canon took over the catalog’s role of...Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What does it mean to be a martyr? What does it mean to be an apostate? How should we understand people who choose one or the other? These are the questions asked by Shusaku Endo in his novel Silence, in which he tells the story of Japanese Catholics and foreign...Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Eugene N. Anderson‘s new book offers an expansive history of food, environment, and their relationships in China. From prehistory through the Ming and beyond, Food and Environment in Early and Medieval China (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) pays careful attention to a wide range of contexts of concern with nature...Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sarah M. Allen‘s new book looks at the literature of tales in eighth- and ninth-century China. Shifting Stories: History, Gossip, and Lore in Narratives from Tang Dynasty China (Harvard University Asia Center, 2014) situates Tang tales in the context of social story exchange among elite men. Allen’s work not only...Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wilt Idema‘s new book traces a story and its transformations through hundreds of years of Chinese literature. The Resurrected Skeleton: From Zhuangzi to Lu Xun (Columbia University Press, 2014) collects and translates variations of the tale of Master Zhuang in his encounter with a skeleton who comes back to life...Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kristina Kleutghen‘s beautiful new book offers a fascinating window into the culture of illusion in China in the eighteenth century and beyond. Imperial Illusions: Crossing Pictorial Boundaries in the Qing Palaces (University of Washington Press, 2015) guides readers into the scenic illusions of the Qing dynasty, focusing on pictorial illusions...Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Byonghyon Choi‘s new book makes a key document of Korean and world history available in English in a volume that will be tremendously useful for both scholarship and teaching. The Annals of King T’aejo: Founder of Korea’s Choson Dynasty (Harvard University Press, 2014) translates an important excerpt from The Veritable...Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our interview with Kenneth M. Swope about his book, The Military Collapse of China’s Ming Dynasty, 1618-44 (Routledge, 2014), published through Routledge, is an effort to address an oversight in how New Books in Military History has generally overlooked both early modern history and works that have an exclusively non-Eurocentric...Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In India in the Chinese Imagination: Myth, Religion, and Thought (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), eleven scholars (including editors John Kieschnick and Meir Shahar) examine the Chinese reception of Indian ideas and myth, and address Chinese attempts to recreate India within the central kingdom. Beginning with Victor Mair’s argument that...Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Miracles of Book and Body: Buddhist Textual Culture and Medieval Japan (University of California Press, 2011), Charlotte Eubanks examines the relationship between Mahāyāna Buddhist sÅ«tras and the human body, using Japanese tale literature (setsuwa) as a lens through which to understand this particular aspect of Buddhist textual culture and the way...Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tamara Chin‘s new book is a tour de force and a must-read for anyone interested in early China, the history of economy, or inter-disciplinarity in the humanities. Focusing on the reign of Han Emperor Wu (r. 141-87 BCE), Savage Exchange: Han Imperialism, Chinese Literary Style, and the Economic Imagination (Harvard...Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In his recent book, Wondrous Brutal Fictions: Eight Buddhist Tales from the Early Japanese Puppet Theater (Columbia University Press, 2013), R. Keller Kimbrough provides us with eight beautifully translated sekkyō and ko-jōruri.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Paola Iovene‘s new book is a beautiful exploration of visions of the future as they have shaped a range of texts, genres, and editorial practices in Chinese literature from the middle of the twentieth century through the beginning of the twenty-first century. Tales of Futures Past: Anticipation and the Ends...Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I love picking up a historical monograph in which the footnotes count for a quarter or more of the total pages. Most students don’t share this strange love of mine. I’m therefore always trying to figure out ways to bring in other sorts of works that will engage students without...Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Joseph D. Hankins‘s marvelous new ethnography of the contemporary Buraku people looks at the labor involved in “identifying, dismantling, and reproducing” the Buraku situation in Japan and beyond. Taking readers on a journey from Lubbock, Texas to Tokyo, India, and back again, Working Skin: Making Leather, Making a Multicultural Japan (University...Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

China today attracts one of the largest foreign student populations in the world. In 1975, though, very few foreign students were allowed to study in then-isolated China, especially Western students. But, Dr. Peter Peverelli was a part of a small cohort of students who studied in Beijing Language Institute at...Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

China today attracts one of the largest foreign student populations in the world. In 1975, though, very few foreign students were allowed to study in then-isolated China, especially Western students. But, Dr. Peter Peverelli was a part of a small cohort of students who studied in Beijing Language Institute at the tail end of the turbulent Cultural Revolution. In One Turbulent Year - China 1975 (Boekscout, 2013), Dr. Peverelli writes on his experiences in Beijing as one of the first Western students allowed to study in China through a special exchange agreement between the Chinese and Dutch governments. Despite their student status, Dr. Peverelli and his classmates had VIP status and were seen as essentially diplomats. He even attended the state funeral for Zhou Enlai, one of the most important political figures in China during the past century. One Turbulent Year chronicles daily life under incredible and rare circumstances, as these Western European college students were interacting not just with Chinese loc