Modern Japan History Association upcoming events

New Books on Japan: "The Narrowing Sea: Fukuoka, Pusan, and the Rise and Fall of an Imperial Region" (May 04, 2026)

Tue, 05 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Monday, May 4, 2026 | 8:00-9:30 PM ET

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The Narrowing Sea: Fukuoka, Pusan, and the Rise and Fall of an Imperial Region (University of California Press, 2025)

Presenter: Hannah Shepherd, Assistant Professor, Yale University

Discussant: Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Professor Emerita of Japanese History, Australian National University

Moderator: Joseph Seeley, Associate Professor of History, University of Virginia

The Modern Japan History Association invites the wider community to a conversation with Hannah Shepherd, who will be speaking about her new book The Narrowing Sea: Fukuoka, Pusan, and the Rise and Fall of an Imperial Region (University of California Press, 2025). This book examines the shared histories of Pusan and Fukuoka over the eight decades from Japan's forced opening of Korea's ports in 1876 to the end of the Korean War in 1953. One city was Korean, the other Japanese; one was a burgeoning colonial port, the other a provincial city buoyed by imperial expansion. Wars, colonization, and capitalist industrialization forged intimate connections between the two, knitting together an imperial region that transcended its maritime boundaries. Drawing on both Japanese and Korean archives, and emphasizing the concept of imperial urbanization, Shepherd challenges traditional views of empire and urban growth and shows how local networks, migration, and capital flows shaped the region's exploitative and uneven geographies. The waters between Fukuoka and Pusan narrowed through intensified interactions that continued even after the end of empire, creating enduring legacies for the postwar and postcolonial eras. Tessa Morris-Suzuki (ANU) will serve as interlocutor.

MJHA Roundtable: Ninja vs. Samurai - Warrior Icons in History, Popular Culture, and the Martial Arts (May 12, 2026)

Tue, 12 May 2026 22:00:00 GMT

Tuesday, May 12, 2024 4:00-5:30 PM ET
Wednesday, May 13, 2024 5:00-6:30 AM JST

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MJHA Roundtable #4: Ninja vs. Samurai - Warrior Icons in History, Popular Culture, and the Martial Arts

Featured Panelists:

Polina Barducci (University of Cambridge)
Oleg Benesch (University of York)
Robert Tuck (Arizona State University)

Moderator:

Ran Zwigenberg (Pennsylvania State University)

Over the last seventy years, martial arts publications have been hugely influential in shaping views of Japanese culture and history among English-speaking readers. The US journalist Andrew Adams’ 1970 book Ninja: The Invisible Assassins, for instance, went through a staggering thirty-six editions to 2008 and has been cited by hundreds of subsequent popular authors, even as the majority of professional academics have remained unaware of its existence (and its total unreliability). This event engages with academic reluctance to tackle transnational myths of Japanese warriors, including those related to ninja, samurai, and the martial arts. It will showcase both the importance of academic engagement with popular media and the range of concrete ways in which rigorous scholarship delivers insights into these areas. Robert Tuck will argue that “ninja” history is not really “history” in the conventional sense, and that literary-focused methodologies are more useful for understanding how “ninja” discourse works. Polina Barducci will discuss the earlier historical records of those who later became known as the ninja and the challenges of distinguishing them from other warriors. Oleg Benesch will explore the reinvention of the samurai as an icon in modern Japan and around the world. Taken together, the three panelists make a powerful case that the time has come to take popular martial discourses seriously as a field of academic study.

New Books on Japan: "Colonial Surveillance: Technologies of Identification and Control in Japan’s Empire" (May 20, 2026)

Wed, 20 May 2026 23:00:00 GMT

Wednesday, May 20, 2026 | 7:00-8:30 PM ET

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Colonial Surveillance: Technologies of Identification and Control in Japan’s Empire (Stanford University Press, 2025)

Presenter: Midori Ogasawara, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Victoria

Discussant: Miriam Kingsberg Kadia, Professor of History, University of Colorado

Moderator: Nick Kapur, Associate Professor of History, Rutgers University-Camden

The Modern Japan History Association invites the wider community to a conversation with Midori Ogasawara (University of Victoria), who will be speaking about her recent book Colonial Surveillance: Technologies of Identification and Control in Japan’s Empire. Taking a historical and sociological perspective informed by surveillance studies, this book shows how biometric identification became a powerful means of policing and racialization of ethnic others in Japan's empire. Based on archival research in Japan and China, as well as interviews with the Chinese survivors of Japanese occupation, Ogasawara explores the transformation of identification techniques from Japan to its colonies and the lasting impacts of colonial surveillance on everyday people. Against the historical backdrop of Japan's colonial expansion in the pseudo-state of "Manchukuo," Ogasawara invites readers to delve into the little-known genealogy of modern-day identification systems, such as koseki family registers and fingerprinting, and the colonial roots of the troubling and often-invisible surveillance technologies that saturate our digital lives today. Miriam Kingsberg Kadia (Colorado) will serve of interlocutor.

New Books on Japan: "A Nation Within: North Korean Zainichi in Postimperial Japan" (June 03, 2026)

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 23:00:00 GMT

Monday, June 3, 2026 | 7:00-8:30 PM ET
Tuesday, June 4 | 8:00-9:30 AM JST

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A Nation Within: North Korean Zainichi in Postimperial Japan (Stanford University Press, 2026)

Presenter: Sayaka Chatani, Associate Professor of History, National University of Singapore

Discussant: Yumi Kim, Associate Professor of History, University of California Berkeley

Moderator: Joseph Seeley, Associate Professor of History, University of Virginia

The Modern Japan History Association invites the wider community to a conversation with Sayaka Chatani, who will be speaking about her new book A Nation Within: North Korean Zainichi in Postimperial Japan (Stanford University Press, 2026). The presence of hundreds of thousands ethnic Koreans in Japan, or "zainichi Koreans," is one of the visible legacies of Japanese colonialism. A surprising and influential group among zainichi Koreans that persists to this day is Chongryon, the only pro–North Korean diasporic group based in a capitalist society. Chongryon historically represented the central grassroots force seeking to liberate Koreans from Japan's imperial and neo-imperial influences. At the heart of the Chongryon community stands a political organization equipped with a central bureaucracy in Tokyo, with a headquarters in nearly every prefecture. Often called a de facto embassy of North Korea, the Chongryon organization has, in effect, functioned as a state within another state—operating hundreds of schools, banks, hospitals, business associations, publishing houses, and many other institutions across Japan. Based on extensive archival research and nearly 250 original interviews collected with co-researcher KumHee Cho, who was raised within the Chongryon community, Sayaka Chatani offers a sweeping social history of this secretive, protective community in xenophobic Japanese society. Weaving together personal accounts and situating them in a multi-layered, transnational political context, the book offers a finely textured, intimate narrative of the community's tumultuous history and decolonial praxis. Through the stories of Chongryon, this book provides a bottom-up analysis of power politics among zainichi Koreans and reshapes our understanding of Japanese history, Korean history, and the Cold War in Asia. Yumi Kim (Berkeley) will serve as interlocutor.

New Books from Japan #14: "International Politics of Migration: Overseas "Chinese" in Japan and the Cold War Regime in East Asia" (July 21, 2026)

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Tuesday, July 21, 2026 8:00-9:30 PM ET | Wednesday, July 22, 2026 9:00-10:30 AM JST

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New Books from Japan #14:

『「人の移動」の国際政治―東アジア冷戦体制の形成と日本華僑』

International Politics of Migration: Overseas "Chinese" in Japan and the Cold War Regime in East Asia

Presenter: 鶴園裕基 (Tsuruzono Yūki, Kanagawa University)

Discussant: Evan Dawley (Goucher College)

Moderator: Tadashi Ishikawa (University of Central Florida)

This book seeks to elucidate how Nihon-kakyō (ethnic Chinese and Taiwanese residents in Japan) came to face severe restrictions on their international mobility in the Cold War era. In the prewar period, Chinese and Taiwanese subjects were able to travel to Japan without passports. However, as the Cold War order took shape in East Asia after 1945, both the Japanese and Taiwanese authorities constructed increasingly stringent border and migration control regimes. At the time of the conclusion of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, the Japanese government deprived Taiwanese residents of their Japanese nationality and reclassified them, like migrants originating from the Chinese mainland, as “Chinese.” At the same time, however, Japan extended only limited recognition to the Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan and deliberately left ambiguous whether the “Chinese” residing in Japan belonged to the ROC or to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Under these circumstances, Nihon-kakyō were prevented from returning to mainland China due to the absence of diplomatic relations between Japan and the PRC. Meanwhile, the ROC government, having retreated to Taiwan, imposed restrictions on the entry of overseas Chinese on the basis of martial law promulgated in 1949. As a result, during the Cold War period, Nihon-kakyō were effectively denied both the right to return to their “home country” and the right to have their affiliation formally recognized. Confronted with this predicament, they were driven to engage in political movements aimed at asserting affiliation with either of the rival Chinese state and securing their rights of residence in Japan as foreign nationals.

本書は、冷戦期に日本華僑と呼ばれた人びとが、いかにして国際移動を制約されるに至ったかを明らかにしようとする。戦前期、中国人や台湾人はパスポートなしに日本に渡航することができた。しかし戦後東アジアに冷戦体制が形成されていくなかで、日本と台湾の当局はそれぞれ厳格な出入国管理を構築していく。日本政府はサンフランシコ講和条約締結のタイミングで、台湾人の持つ日本国籍を喪失させ、大陸出身者と同様に「中国人」とした。しかし、日本政府は台湾の中華民国を限定的にしか承認せず、日本国内の「中国人」が中華民国、中華人民共和国のいずれに帰属するかを意図的に曖昧にした。こうした状況のなかで、日本華僑は日本と中華人民共和国の間の国交の不存在ゆえに中国大陸へ帰還することを制限された。その一方、台湾に撤退した中華民国は、1949年に発令した戒厳令を根拠として華僑の入境を規制した。これによって冷戦期の日本華僑は、「本国に帰還する権利」と、「帰属を確認する権利」を事実上、否定されることになった。これによって日本華僑は、いずれかの中国への帰属を主張し、日本における外国人としての居住権を確立することを目的とした政治運動に駆り立てられていったのである。