New Books on Japan: "Border of Water and Ice: The Yalu River and Japan's Empire in Korea and Manchuria"

Tuesday, October 15, 2024 | 6:00-7:30 PM ET | REGISTER FOR ZOOM

Border of Water and Ice: The Yalu River and Japan's Empire in Korea and Manchuria (Cornell University Press, 2024)

Author: Joseph Seeley, Assistant Professor of History, University of Virginia

Discussant: Andre Schmid, Associate Professor of East Asian Studies, University of Toronto

The Modern Japan History Association invites the wider community to a conversation with Joseph Seeley (University of Virginia). Professor Seeley will be speaking about his new book, Border of Water and Ice: The Yalu River and Japan's Empire in Korea and Manchuria (Cornell University Press, 2024). Border of Water and Ice explores the significance of the Yalu River as a strategic border between Korea and Manchuria (Northeast China) during a period of Japanese imperial expansion into the region. The Yalu's seasonal patterns of freezing, thawing, and flooding shaped colonial efforts to control who and what could cross the border. Professor Seeley shows how the unpredictable movements of water, ice, timber-cutters, anti-Japanese guerrillas, smugglers, and other borderland actors spilled outside the bounds set by Japanese colonizers, even as imperial border-making reinforced Japan's wider political and economic power. Emphasizing the tenuous, environmentally contingent nature of imperial border governance, Border of Water and Ice argues for the importance of understanding history across the different seasons. Andre Schmid (University of Toronto) will serve as interlocutor.