New Books on Japan: "The Island and the Stars: A History of Japan's Space Programs"

Monday, December 7, 2026 | 7:00-8:30 PM ET

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The Island and the Stars: A History of Japan's Space Programs (Stanford University Press, 2026)

Presenter: Subodhana Wijeyeratne, Assistant Professor of History, Purdue University

Discussant: Asif Siddiqi, Professor of History, Fordham University

Moderator: Sara Kang, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Society of Fellows, Princeton University

The Modern Japan History Association invites the wider community to a conversation with Subodhana Wijeyeratne (Purdue), who will be speaking about his new book The Island and the Stars: A History of Japan's Space Programs (Stanford University Press, 2026). The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is among the six largest national space agencies in the world, along with China's CNSA, US's NASA, and Russia's Roscosmos. JAXA's budget is more than $1 billion USD—bigger than France or Germany individually, and more than that of Italy, India, Canada, and the UK combined. And yet, Japan's significant contributions have largely been absent in the history of space exploration, and space exploration largely absent in the history of technology in Japan. The Islands and the Stars corrects this conspicuous oversight. Through meticulous archival research in Japanese and anglophone archives, Subodhana Wijeyeratne examines the history of Japan's space exploration efforts over nearly a century. Wijeyeratne traces the evolution of Japan's space program from its early origins in the 1920s, through the postwar period of rapid technological innovation, to the consolidation of its various institutional elements into JAXA in 2003. He situates Japan's space programs within the broader history of the country's postwar recovery, economic growth, and cultural identity, while also considering their place within global trends in space exploration. Through this narrative, Wijeyeratne not only illuminates Japan's centrality to the global history of science and technology, but also offers insights into the future of global space exploration, emphasizing the importance of diverse voices and perspectives in the quest to understand our place in the cosmos. Asif Siddiqi (Fordham) will serve as interlocutor.