Modern Japan History Association upcoming events

New Books on Japan: "Kinkakuji and Kitayama: Space, Place, Monuments and Memory in Japan 1222-1994" (September 10, 2026)

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 23:00:00 GMT

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.

New Books from Japan #15: "Research and Development in a 'Late Developer' Japan: Telecommunications, Engineers, and Nationalism" (September 28, 2026)

Mon, 28 Sep 2026 23:00:00 GMT

Sunday, September 27, 2026 7:00-8:30 PM EDT
Monday, September 28, 2026 8:00-9:30 AM JST

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New Books from Japan #15:

「後進国」日本の研究開発電気通信工学・技師・ナショナリズム

Research and Development in a “Late Developer" Japan: Telecommunications, Engineers, and Nationalism

Presenter: 河西棟馬 (Kawanishi Toma, Institute of Science Tokyo)

Discussant: Hiromi Mizuno (University of Minnesota Twin Cities)

Moderator: Sayaka Chatani (National University of Singapore)

Will "late-comer countries" forever remain as consumers of technologies invented elsewhere? This ambitious work traces the lineage of pre-war Japanese engineers—such as Torikata Uichi, Yagi Hidetsugu, and Matsumae Shigeyoshi—who broke free from mere technological adoption and imitation. It sheds light on the driving forces that motivated these pioneers and the conditions that enabled their breakthroughs. By incorporating an examination of their failed visions and the constraints of their era, this study offers a penetrating analysis of their historic achievements in the history of technology. Recipient of the 38th Japan Society for the History of Industrial Technology Award (2025).

「後進国」は、発明された技術の利用者にとどまるのか。鳥潟右一や八木秀次、松前重義など、移植や模倣を脱した戦前の技術者たちの系譜を、彼らを突き動かした要因や跳躍を可能にした条件ともども明らかにする。挫折した構想や時代的制約も見据え、技術史的達成を冷静に分析した気鋭の力作。第38回日本産業技術史学会賞受賞 (2025)。

New Books on Japan: "Empire by Association: Agriculture and the Reorganization of the Rural Economy in Colonial Korea" (October 06, 2026)

Tue, 06 Oct 2026 22:00:00 GMT

Tuesday, October, 2026 | 6:00-7:30 PM ET

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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.

2026 Distinguished Annual Lecture: Jordan Sand (October 08, 2026)

Thu, 08 Oct 2026 23:00:00 GMT

Thursday, October 8, 2026 | 7:00-8:30 PM ET
Wednesday, October 9, 2026 | 8:00-9:30 AM JST

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The fourth annual MJHA Distinguished Annual Lecture, on a topic TBA, will be given in October 2026 by Jordan Sand, Professor of Japanese History, Georgetown University

New Books on Japan: "Rutgers Meets Japan: A Trans-Pacific Network of the Late Nineteenth Century" (October 22, 2026)

Thu, 22 Oct 2026 23:00:00 GMT

Thursday, October 22, 2026 | 7:00-8:30 PM ET

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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.

New Books from Japan #16: "National Policy and Architecture: Architectural Technocrats and the Planning Imagination in Wartime Japan" (November 11, 2026)

Wed, 11 Nov 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Wednesday, November 11, 2026 7:00-8:30 AM ET | 9:00-10:30 PM JST

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New Books from Japan #16:

『国策と建築: 戦時期日本の建築テクノクラートと構想力』(東京大学出版会, 2026)

National Policy and Architecture: Architectural Technocrats and the Planning Imagination in Wartime Japan (University of Tokyo Press, 2026)

Presenter: 常松祐介 (Tsunematsu Yūsuke, Assistant Professor, School of Science and Engineering, Meiji University)

Discussant: Katja Schmidtpott (Professor of Japanese History, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany)

Moderator: Tadashi Ishikawa (Associate Professor of History, University of Central Florida)

This book argues that the achievements of the architectural profession in modern Japan lay not only in the creation of outstanding buildings but also in the formulation of policy visions for a new social order. It further contends that this capacity for institutional and social imagination reached its height during the Second World War. Rather than focusing on architects who designed buildings, the book examines “architectural administrators,” officials who regulated building activity through laws and administrative institutions. It traces how they expanded their influence as technocrats through collaboration with universities and the military. From the interwar period onward, architectural administrators sought to move beyond the regulation of individual buildings and to establish themselves as planners of cities and the national territory. By the wartime period, they had entered a wide range of national policy fields, including urban air defense, housing provision, and national land planning. Through a close reading of their extensive writings, this book explores how they drew upon professional expertise to formulate projects of social transformation. It thereby reinterprets the wartime regime not simply as a system imposed from above, but as one sustained by the active participation of reform-minded professional groups. Finally, by tracing how their ideals of social reform were reconfigured into rationales for the execution of war and the expansion of state control, the book reconsiders the deep entanglement of expert knowledge and state governance in modern Japan.

近代日本の建築界の業績とは、優れた建築デザインを生み出したことだけではなく、新たな社会のありかたを示す政策構想を打ち出したことにあり、とりわけ第二次世界大戦期にこうした構想力が最高潮に達していた、というのが本書の主張である。本書では建築物を設計する建築家ではなく、法に則り建築行為を統御する「建築行政官」に光を当て、彼らが大学や軍部と連携しながら、テクノクラートとしての影響力を拡張していった過程を検証する。戦間期以降、諸官庁に加わった建築行政官たちは、個々の建築物を規制する立場から、都市や国土全体を計画する立場への進出を企て、戦時期には都市防空・住宅供給・国土計画といった広範な国策領域に参画するに至っていた。本書では、建築行政官たちによって残された膨大な論考を読み解くことで、彼らが自身の専門知を足掛かりとして、いかなる社会革新を構想したのかを明らかにする。こうした検討を通して、戦時体制を単純な上意下達の体制と理解するのではなく、革新を志向する専門家集団の主体的な参画によって支えられたものとして捉え直す。さらに、彼らの掲げる社会改良の理念が、戦争遂行や国家統制を支える論理へと組み替えられていく道筋を跡づけることで、近代日本における専門知と国家統治との深い結びつきを問い直す。

New Books on Japan: "Fuji: A Mountain in the Making" (January 28, 2027)

Fri, 29 Jan 2027 01:00:00 GMT

Thursday, January 28, 2027 | 8:00-9:30 PM ET
Friday, January 29, 2027 | 10:00-11:30 AM JST

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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.

New Books on Japan: "Age of Disaffection The Aesthetic Critique of Politics in 1960s Japan" (February 10, 2027)

Thu, 11 Feb 2027 00:00:00 GMT

Wednesday, February 10, 2027 | 7:00-8:30 PM ET
Thursday, February 11, 2027 | 9:00-10:30 AM JST

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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.