2022-2023 Series

December 14, 2022 | 7:00PM-8:30 PM EST | REGISTER FOR ZOOM

Imperial Gateway: Colonial Taiwan and Japan's Expansion in South China and Southeast Asia, 1895-1945 (Cornell University Press, 2022)

Author: Seiji Shirane, Assistant Professor of History, City College of New York

Discussant: Andrew Gordon, Lee and Juliet Folger Fund Professor of History, Harvard University

The Modern Japan History Association invites the wider community to a conversation with Seiji Shirane (Assistant Professor of Japanese History at City College of New York). Professor Shirane will be speaking about his new book, Imperial Gateway: Colonial Taiwan and Japan's Expansion in China and Southeast Asia, 1895-1945 (Cornell University Press, 2022). In Imperial Gateway, Seiji Shirane explores the political, social, and economic significance of colonial Taiwan in the southern expansion of Japan's empire from 1895 to the end of World War II. Drawing on multilingual archives from six countries, Imperial Gateway shows how Japanese officials and Taiwanese subjects transformed Taiwan into a regional gateway for expansion in an ever-shifting international order. Andrew Gordon (Lee and Juliet Folger Fund Professor of History, Harvard University) will serve as discussant.  

February 8, 2023 | 7:00PM-8:30 PM EST | REGISTER FOR ZOOM

Inglorious, Illegal Bastards: Japan's Self-Defense Force during the Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2022)

Author: Aaron Skabelund, Associate Professor of History, Brigham Young University

Discussant: Yoshikuni Igarashi, Professor of History, Vanderbilt University

The Modern Japan History Association invites the wider community to a conversation with Aaron Skabelund (Associate Professor of History, Brigham Young University). Professor Skabelund will be speaking about his new book, Inglorious, Illegal Bastards: Japan's Self-Defense Force during the Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2022). Inglorious, Illegal Bastards explores how a variety of efforts by Japan's Self Defense Forces to gain legitimacy achieved some success and influenced the public over time, but also transformed the force itself, as it assumed new priorities and traditions and contributed to the making of a Cold War defense identity, which came to be shared by wider society in Japan. As Professor Skabelund demonstrates, this identity endures today, several decades after the end of the Cold War. Yoshikuni Igarashi (Professor of History, Vanderbilt University) will serve as discussant.  

March 8, 2023 | 7:00PM-8:30 PM EST | REGISTER FOR ZOOM

Madness in the Family: Women, Care, and Illness in Japan (Oxford University Press, 2022)

Author: H. Yumi Kim, Assistant Professor of History, Johns Hopkins University

Discussant: Daniel Botsman, Professor of History, Yale University

The Modern Japan History Association invites the wider community to a conversation with H. Yumi Kim (Assistant Professor of History, Johns Hopkins University). Professor Kim will be speaking about her new book, Madness in the Family: Women, Care, and Illness in Japan (Oxford University Press, 2022) . Madness in the Family explores how, following the introduction to Japan of Western ideas about psychiatry and mental illness in the 1880s, the family came to be seen as the natural provider of care for those suffering from mental illnesses. As Professor Kim demonstrates, women and families navigated a shifting therapeutic landscape by producing their own gendered approaches to madness that would take precedence over the claims of psychiatry, the law, and the state. By decoupling the history of mental illness from the discipline and institutions of psychiatry, Madness in the Family reveals the power and fragilities of gender, kinship, and care in the creation of different modes of caring for and understanding mental illness that persist in Japan to this day. Daniel Botsman (Professor of History, Yale University) will serve as discussant. 

April 12, 2023 | 7:00PM-8:30 PM EST | REGISTER FOR ZOOM

Gas Mask Nation: Visualizing Civil Air Defense in Wartime Japan (University of Chicago Press, 2023)

Author: Gennifer Weisenfeld, Walter H. Annenberg Distinguished Professor of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies, Duke University

Discussant: David Fedman, Associate Professor of History, UC Irvine

The Modern Japan History Association invites the wider community to a conversation with Gennifer Weisenfeld (Professor of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies, Duke University). Professor Weisenfeld will be speaking about her new book, Gas Mask Nation: Visualizing Civil Air Defense in Wartime Japan (University of Chicago Press, 2023). Gas Mask Nation explores the multilayered construction of an anxious yet perversely pleasurable visual culture of Japanese civil air defense—or bōkū—through a diverse range of artworks, photographs, films and newsreels, magazine illustrations, postcards, cartoons, advertising, fashion, everyday goods, government posters, and state propaganda. Professor Weisenfeld reveals the immersive aspects of this culture, in which Japan’s imperial subjects were mobilized to regularly perform highly orchestrated civil air defense drills throughout the country. David Fedman (Associate Professor of History, UC Irvine) will serve as discussant.  

May 15, 2023 | 7:30PM-9:00 PM EST | REGISTER FOR ZOOM

Church Space and the Capital in Prewar Japan (University of Hawai'i Press, 2022)

Author: Garrett L. Washington, Associate Professor of History, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Discussant: Jordan Sand, Professor of Japanese History, Georgetown University

The Modern Japan History Association invites the wider community to a conversation with Garrett L. Washington (Associate Professor of History, University of Massachusetts Amherst). Professor Washington will be speaking about his new book, Church Space and the Capital in Prewar Japan (University of Hawai'i Press, 2022). Church Space and the Capital provides a spatially explicit study on the influence of the Protestant church in imperial Japan. Professor Washington examines the physical and social spaces that Tokyo’s largest Japanese-led Protestant congregations cultivated between 1879 and 1923 and their broader social ties. These churches developed alongside, and competed with, the locational, architectural, and social spaces of Buddhism, Shinto, and Japanese New Religions. Japanese pastors and laypersons alike grappled with Christianity’s relationships to national identity, political ideology, women’s rights, Japanese imperialism, and modernity. Professor Washington's groundbreaking study offers answers to longstanding questions about Protestant Christianity’s reputation and impact, but also goes further, using a space-centered perspective to focus attention on Japanese agency in the religion’s metamorphosis and social impact. Jordan Sand (Professor of Japanese History, Georgetown University) will serve as discussant.