2025 MJHA Book Prize Finalists

Matthew Augustine, From Japanese Empire to American Hegemony: Koreans and Okinawans in the Resettlement of Northeast Asia (University of Hawai'i Press, 2023)

Ryo Morimoto, Nuclear Ghost: Atomic Livelihoods in Fukushima's Gray Zone (University of California Press, 2023)

Jun Uchida, Provincializing Empire: Ōmi Merchants in the Japanese Transpacific Diaspora (University of California Press, 2023)

2025 Modern Japan History Association Book Prize Winner

Ryo Morimoto

Author of Nuclear Ghost: Atomic Livelihoods in Fukushima's Gray Zone (University of California Press, 2023) 

Based on nearly a decade of painstaking participant-observation fieldwork in the irradiated coastal fallout zone of Japan's Fukushima prefecture, Ryo Morimoto's Nuclear Ghost applies the insights of indigenous studies to deconstruct concepts of "victimhood," "harm," and "compensation." As he shows, even well-meaning scientists, scholars, artists, technocrats, and social workers have wrought manifold forms of damage upon individuals, families, communities, and environments. Rejecting the analytical construct of "atomic victimhood" in favor of "atomic livelihoods," Morimoto foregrounds the lived experience and recovers the agency of people seeking to rebuild their lives and networks in the wake of the "triple disasters" of March 11, 2011. Meanwhile, he remains attentive to the coercive power of the state and the longer history of northeast Japan as a marginalized internal “colony." Morimoto's incisive analytical lens spares no one, not even himself. The result is not just a powerful critique of how disaster management is both practiced and understood, but also an original and unforgettably empathetic contribution to anthropology and Japanese Studies.