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• New Books on Japan: "Kings in All but Name: The Lost History of Ouchi Rule in Japan, 1350-1569"

  • When
    February 27, 2025
  •  
    8:00 PM - 9:30 PM
  • Location
    Zoom

  Thursday, February 27, 2025 | 8:00-9:30 PM EST | REGISTER FOR ZOOM

   

  Kings in All but Name: The Lost History of Ouchi Rule in Japan, 1350-1569 (Oxford University Press, 2024)

  Author: Thomas Conlan, Professor of Medieval Japanese History, Princeton University

  Discussant: Adam Clulow, Professor of History, University of Texas

  The Modern Japan History Association invites the wider community to a conversation with Thomas Conlan (Princeton), who will be speaking about his new book Kings in All but Name: The Lost History of Ouchi Rule in Japan, 1350-1569 (Oxford, 2024). Kings in All but Name contends that in sixteenth-century Japan, members of the Ouchi family were kings in all but name for much of the country. Immensely wealthy, they controlled sea lanes stretching to Korea and China, as well as the Japanese city of Yamaguchi, which functioned as an important regional port with a growing population and a host of temples and shrines. The family was unique in claiming ethnic descent from Korean kings, and - remarkably for this time - such claims were recognized in both Korea and Japan. This status, coupled with dominance over strategic ports and mines, allowed them to facilitate trade throughout East and Southeast Asia. They also played a key cultural role in disseminating Confucian texts, Buddhist sutras, ink paintings, and pottery, and in creating a distinctive, hybrid culture that fused Japanese, Korean, and Chinese beliefs, objects, and customs.

  Kings in All but Name illustrates how Japan was an ethnically diverse state from the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries, closely bound by trading ties to Korea and China. It reveals new archaeological and textual evidence proving that East Asia had integrated trading networks long before the arrival of European explorers and includes an analysis of ores and slag that shows how mining techniques improved and propelled East Asian trade. The story of the Ouchi rulers argues for the existence of a segmented polity, with one center located in Kyoto, and the other in the Ouchi city of Yamaguchi. It also contradicts the belief that Japan collapsed into centuries of turmoil and rather proves that Japan was a stable and prosperous trading state where rituals, policies, politics, and economics were interwoven and diverse. Adam Clulow (Texas) will serve as interlocutor.

  
  

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• New Books on Japan: "Koume's World: The Life and Work of a Samurai Woman Before and After the Meiji Restoration"

  • When
    March 28, 2025
  •  
    7:00 PM - 8:30 PM
  • Location
    Zoom

  Friday, March 28, 2025 | 7:00-8:30 PM ET | REGISTER FOR ZOOM

  
  

  Koume's World: The Life and Work of a Samurai Woman Before and After the Meiji Restoration (Columbia University Press, 2023)

  Author: Simon Partner, Professor of History, Duke University

  Discussant: Laura Nenzi, Professor of History, Emory University

  The Modern Japan History Association invites the wider community to a conversation with Simon Partner (Duke University), who will be speaking about his new book Koume's World: The Life and Work of a Samurai Woman Before and After the Meiji Restoration (Columbia University Press, 2023). Kawai Koume (1804–1889) was an accomplished poet and painter in a lower-ranking samurai family in the provincial castle town of Wakayama. She was an eyewitness to many of the key events leading up to the Meiji Restoration and the radical changes that followed, including the famine of 1837, the great earthquake of 1854, the cholera epidemic of 1859, and the departure of samurai to fight in the civil wars of the 1860s. For more than fifty years, she kept a diary recording her family’s daily life—meals and expenses, visitors and the weather, small-town gossip, and news of momentous events. Through Koume’s eyes and words, Koume’s World opens a window on the social, economic, and cultural life of Japan’s transformative nineteenth century across the Tokugawa-Meiji divide. Laura Nenzi (Emory) will serve as interlocutor.

  
  

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• New Books on Japan: "Entwined Atrocities: New Insights into the U.S.–Japan Alliance"

  • When
    April 07, 2025
  •  
    7:00 PM - 8:30 PM
  • Location
    Zoom

  Monday, April 7, 2025 | 7:00-8:30 PM ET
  Tuesday, April 8, 2025 | 8:00-9:30 AM JST | 9:00-10:30 AEST
  
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  Entwined Atrocities: New Insights into the U.S.–Japan Alliance (Peter Lang, 2023)

  Author: Yuki Tanaka, Research Professor Emeritus, Hiroshima City University

  Discussant: Kirsten Ziomek, Associate Professor of History, Adelphi University

  The Modern Japan History Association invites the wider community to a conversation with Yuki Tanaka, who will be speaking about his new book Entwined Atrocities: New Insights into the U.S.–Japan Alliance (Peter Lang, 2023). Entwined Atrocities reconsiders the fire and atomic bombings of Japan during World War II in the context of the U.S. justification of the crime of indiscriminate bombings and its relationship to Japan’s political exploitation of the atomic bombing to cover up Emperor Hirohito’s war responsibility. In addition, it examines the fundamental contradiction in Japan’s peace constitution between the concealment of Hirohito’s war crimes and the responsibility of the United States. Readers will learn how Japanese and U.S. official war memories were crafted to justify their respective wartime performances, exposing the flaws and failing of present-day democracy in Japan and the U.S. This book also explores how Japanese people could potentially create a truly powerful cultural memory of war, utilizing various forms of artwork including Japan’s traditional performing art, Noh. Kirsten Ziomek (Adelphi) will serve as interlocutor.

  
  

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