New Books on Japan
The "New Books on Japan" series of Zoom-based conversations between book authors and noted scholars in the field was established in 2020 by Benjamin Uchiyama, Kirsten Ziomek, and Nick Kapur for the purpose of drawing more attention to some of the most exciting books on Japan published in recent years.
The series was initially made possible for the first two years thanks to the generous sponsorship of the University of Southern California's East Asian Studies Center, and now continues under the auspices of the Modern Japan History Association.
The current Organizing Committee for the New Books on Japan Series consists of:
SARA KANG, Princeton University
NICK KAPUR, Rutgers University-Camden (Chair)
EMER O'DWYER, Oberlin College
JOSEPH SEELEY, University of Virginia
2026-2027 Series
Thursday, September 10, 2026 | 7:00-8:30 PM ET
Friday, September 11, 2026 | 8:00-9:30 AM JST
Kinkakuji and Kitayama: Space, Place, Monuments and Memory in Japan 1222-1994 (Brill, 2025)
Presenter: Thomas Conlan, Professor of East Asian Studies and History, Princeton University
Discussant: Mimi Yiengpruksawan, Professor of Art History, Yale University
Moderator: Nick Kapur, Associate Professor of History, Rutgers University-Camden
The Modern Japan History Association invites the wider community to a conversation with Thomas Conlan (Princeton), who will be speaking about his recent book Kinkakuji and Kitayama: Space, Place, Monuments and Memory in Japan 1222-1994. This work adopts a typology of intentional monuments, historical monuments, ancient monuments, and timeless monuments to describe how Kinkakuji, the Golden Pavilion, was created, preserved, destroyed, and rebuilt. It reveals how Ashikaga Yoshimitsu built Kinkakuji as a monument to glorify his rule. Later, Kinkakuji became a mortuary temple and historical monument, commemorating the Ashikaga, before becoming an ancient monument that was valued for being old. It then became a National Treasure of Japan. After it was destroyed in 1950, Kinkakuji was built as a timeless monument. In the process, Kinkakuji’s reconstruction influenced how UNESCO authorities defined “original” monuments. Mimi Yiengpruksawan (Yale) will serve as interlocutor.
Tuesday, October, 2026 | 6:00-7:30 PM ET
Empire by Association: Agriculture and the Reorganization of the Rural Economy in Colonial Korea (Yale University Press, 2026)
Presenter: Holly Stephens, Lecturer in Japanese and Korean Studies, University of Edinburgh
Discussant: Jun Uchida, Professor of History, Stanford University
Moderator: Joseph Seeley, Associate Professor of History, University of Virginia
The Modern Japan History Association invites the wider community to a conversation with Holly Stephens, who will be speaking about her new book Empire by Association: Agriculture and the Reorganization of the Rural Economy in Colonial Korea (Yale University Press, 2026). Drawing on the diaries of everyday farmers,Empire by Association examines the introduction of scientific and commercial agriculture in Korea from the late nineteenth century through liberation from Japanese rule in 1945. After Japan annexed Korea in 1910, colonial bureaucrats introduced numerous agricultural policies as they sought to turn Korea into a useful imperial possession. In particular, the colonial government hoped to establish Korea as a source of raw materials. To support the necessary increase in cultivation, it created policies introducing new cultivars, new farming methods, and new procedures for crop sales. Yet nature and farmers alike defied the expectations of colonial planners. To demonstrate how the colonial infrastructure of scientific agriculture was experienced and interpreted by ordinary farmers, Stephens traces the implementation of colonial agricultural policies through a series of semi-governmental associations, which were the main agents of the colonial state in the rural economy. As these associations became embedded within the rural economy, they took on significance not just as a representation of the government but also as a conduit of new exchange networks and understandings of agriculture based on scientific and commercial principles, issues that would continue to influence agricultural production even after liberation. Jun Uchida (Stanford) will serve as interlocutor.
Thursday, October 22, 2026 | 7:00-8:30 PM ET
Rutgers Meets Japan: A Trans-Pacific Network of the Late Nineteenth Century (Rutgers University Press, 2026)
Presenter: Haruko Wakabayashi, Associate Teaching Professor, Rutgers University-New Brunswick
Discussant: Hiromu Nagahara, Associate Professor of History, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Moderator: Nick Kapur, Associate Professor of History, Rutgers University-Camden
The Modern Japan History Association invites the wider community to a conversation with Haruko Wakabayashi (Rutgers-New Brunswick), who will be speaking about her recent co-edited volume Rutgers Meets Japan: A Trans-Pacific Network of the Late Nineteenth Century. In 1867 Kusakabe Taro, a young samurai from Fukui, Japan, began studying at Rutgers as its first foreign student. Three years later, in 1870, his former tutor, friend, and Rutgers graduate, William Elliot Griffis, left for Japan to teach English and Science for three and a half years. The year 2020 marked the 150th anniversary of two landmark events in the history of the Rutgers-Japan relationship: the untimely death of Kusakabe only weeks before his graduation, and his friend Griffis’ departure to Japan. Griffis and Kusakabe were only a small piece of a vast transnational network of leading modernizers of Japan in the 1860s and 70s. The Japanese students in New Brunswick were young and innovative men of samurai and aristocratic lineage, who were sent by reform-minded leaders of Japan, which was undergoing a dramatic transformation. They came to New Brunswick seeking Western knowledge that was much needed for the modernization of a newly forming nation. New Brunswick became the hub of a network of Japanese nationals that extended to the major cities of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, and from there to the smaller towns of New England. Once in New Brunswick, these Japanese students were embraced by Protestant ministers, educators, and missionaries—both men and women—whose network encompassed Rutgers College and the neighboring New Brunswick Theological Seminary, and which stretched to Dutch Reformed parishes throughout the Eastern seaboard, and westward as far as the Dutch enclave of Holland, Michigan. Meanwhile, the American teachers and missionaries who left for Japan became part of a network of reformist leaders and Japanese returnees that extended to schools, colleges, and missions in Japan, and formed the foundations of Japan’s modern educational system. Through contributions from scholars and archivists in the U.S., Canada, and Japan, Rutgers Meets Japan aims to reconstruct the early Rutgers-Japan connections and examine the role and impact of this transnational network on Japan and the U.S. in the late nineteenth century. Hiromu Nagahara (MIT) will serve as interlocutor.
Thursday, January 28, 2027 | 8:00-9:30 PM ET
Friday, January 29, 2027 | 10:00-11:30 AM JST
Fuji: A Mountain in the Making (Princeton University Press, 2025)
Presenter: Andrew Bernstein, Professor of History, Lewis & Clark College
Discussant: William Tsutsui, Chancellor and Professor of History, Ottawa University
Moderator: Joseph Seeley, Associate Professor of History, University of Virginia
The Modern Japan History Association invites the wider community to a conversation with Andrew Bernstein, who will be speaking about his new book Fuji: A Mountain in the Making (Princeton University Press, 2025). 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 has been both a totem of national unity and a flashpoint for economic and political disputes. And while its soaring majesty has inspired countless works of literature and art, the foot of the mountain is home to military training grounds and polluting industries. Tracing the history of Fuji from its geological origins in the remote past to its recent inscription as a World Heritage Site, Andrew Bernstein explores these and other contradictions in the story of the mountain, inviting us to reflect on the relationships we share with the nonhuman world and one another. William Tsutsui (Ottawa) will serve as interlocutor.
Wednesday, February 10, 2027 | 7:00-8:30 PM ET
Thursday, February 11, 2027 | 9:00-10:30 AM JST
Age of Disaffection The Aesthetic Critique of Politics in 1960s Japan (Columbia University Press, 2025)
Presenter: Patrick Noonan, Resident Director, Kyoto Consortium for Japanese Studies
Discussant: Nick Kapur, Associate Professor of History, Rutgers University-Camden
Moderator: Nick Kapur, Associate Professor of History, Rutgers University-Camden
The Modern Japan History Association invites the wider community to a conversation with Patrick Noonan (KCJS), who will be speaking about his recent book Age of Disaffection The Aesthetic Critique of Politics in 1960s Japan. The 1960s in Japan have long been understood as a period of radical political engagement. But as political movements from Old Left Communism to New Left revolts appeared to fail in their efforts to revolutionize Japanese society, artists and intellectuals came to reject the ideals of postwar politics. Instead, they advocated withdrawing from political participation and making self-transformation the grounds for social change. This provocative book uncovers a paradox at the heart of the 1960s: how political disillusionment became the basis for a new form of politics—a politics of the self. Examining aesthetic criticism, popular literature, avant-garde art, cinema, and political theory, Patrick Noonan argues that cultural producers in 1960s Japan cultivated what he calls an “ethos of disaffection” toward revolutionary politics and postwar society. Departing from approaches that define politics as contestation, Age of Disaffection foregrounds cultivation, or the production of ways of feeling and relating to the world in efforts to redefine the political. It presents an unorthodox account of the 1960s: withdrawal from political activity developed not as the decade ended but as it was unfolding. Noonan reveals how Japanese artists and intellectuals in this period confronted a crucial question that continues to vex efforts at radical change today: transform institutions or alter how people relate to themselves and others? Nick Kapur (Rutgers) will serve as interlocutor.