Modern Japan History Association Book Prize
The 3rd annual Modern Japan History Association Book Prize winner will be awarded in early 2026 to an outstanding English-language book on modern Japan or Japanese history published in 2024.
Prize
The winner will receive a monetary prize of $1,000 USD.
Guidelines for Submission
- Full consideration will be given to books substantially illuminating the history of modern and contemporary Japan (1868-present), as well as books exploring the historical roots of modern Japanese society and culture. Provided this condition is met, books from any academic discipline and books covering earlier eras of history are eligible.
- To be eligible, books must be a first edition with a copyright year of 2024.
- Books must be originally published in English. Translations of books originally published in other languages will not be considered.
- Reference works, exhibition catalogs, multi-authored collections of essays, textbooks, original poetry or fiction, memoirs, or autobiographies are not eligible.
- Authors need not be members of the MJHA.
- Only publishers and MJHA members may nominate a book for consideration.
- Upon receipt of a completed nomination form, nominators will be provided with addresses for prize committee members. One copy of the book must be sent to each member of the committee to insure full consideration.
- To receive full consideration books shipped to committee members must be postmarked by July 1, 2025.
Deadline
Nominations must be sent by July 1, 2025 to be eligible for the 2026 award.
Nomination Form
The same nomination form is used for both the MJHA Book Prize and the F. Hilary Conroy First Book Prize. Each book needs to be submitted only once for both prizes. All books submitted once will automatically be considered for both prizes, if eligible.
To submit a nomination, please use the form found HERE.
2026 Prize Committee
MIRIAM KINGSBERG KADIA (Chair)
University of Colorado
PAUL BARCLAY
Lafayette College
NICK KAPUR
Rutgers University
2026 MJHA Book Prize Finalists
Kristopher W. Kersey, Facing Images: Medieval Japanese Art and the Problem of Modernity (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2024)
Barak Kushner, The Geography of Injustice: East Asia's Battle Between Memory and History (Cornell University Press, 2024)
Simon Partner, Koume's World: The Life and Work of a Samurai Woman Before and After the Meiji Restoration (Columbia University Press, 2024)
2026 Modern Japan History Association Book Prize Winner
Simon Partner
Author of Koume's World: The Life and Work of a Samurai Woman Before and After the Meiji Restoration (Columbia University Press, 2024)
Koume’s World, Simon Partner’s exhaustively researched and quietly ambitious latest book, draws upon the singular diary of a talented poet, artist, and matriarch to reconstruct the quotidian experiences of a lower-ranking samurai family in the provincial center of Wakayama over the course of the nineteenth century. Accessibly written and suitable for nonspecialists and undergraduates as well as historians of modern Japan, the book seamlessly integrates large historical processes with the granular concerns of an ordinary individual in extraordinary times. Through his sensitive reading of Koume's poignant reflections, Partner highlights the idiosyncratic impacts of modernization across Japan's seismic transition from the Tokugawa to the Meiji period.
Previous Modern Japan History Association Book Prize Winners
2025 - Ryo Morimoto, Nuclear Ghost: Atomic Livelihoods in Fukushima's Gray Zone
2024 - Jessamyn Abel, Dream Super-Express: A Cultural History of the World’s First Bullet Train