Sandra Fahy, “Marching Through Suffering: Loss and Survival in North Korea” (Columbia UP, 2015)
Amidst an atmosphere of hope on the Korean Peninsula over the past year, questions over the wellbeing of North Korea’s population have …
Tom Cliff, “Oil and Water: Being Han in Xinjiang” (U Chicago Press, 2016)
Compared to the provinces’s native Uyghur population, Han Chinese settlers in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region have not attracted as much scholarly …
Laura Neitzel, “The Life We Longed for: Danchi Housing and the Middle Class Dream in Postwar Japan” (MerwinAsia, 2016)
Laura Neitzel’s The Life We Longed for: Danchi Housing and the Middle Class Dream in Postwar Japan (MerwinAsia, 2016) is a chronicle of …
Andrew B. Kipnis, “From Village to City: Social Transformation in a Chinese County Seat” (U California Press, 2016)
“When I first went to Zouping in 1988,” writes Andrew B. Kipnis in From Village to City: Social Transformation in a Chinese …
Gordon Mathews, “The World in Guangzhou: Africans and Other Foreigners in South China’s Global Marketplace” (U Chicago Press, 2017)
When we think of globalization and global cities, we might be inclined to think of New York or London. Yet in recent …
Hongwei Bao, “Queer Comrades: Gay Identity and Tongzhi Activism in Postsocialist China” (NIAS Press, 2018)
Hongwei Bao’s book is a thoughtful exploration of gay identity and queer activism in China. This work stems from the term and …
Ji-Yeon O. Jo, “Homing: An Affective Topography of Ethnic Korean Return Migration” (U Hawaii Press, 2018)
For anyone with an interest in Korean studies, the study of diaspora and globalization, and indeed in broader questions around transnational identities …
Erik Mueggler, “Songs for Dead Parents: Corpse, Text, and World in Southwest China” (U Chicago Press, 2017)
The Lòlop’ò of Southwest China’s Yunnan Province have a folktale in which they, Han Chinese, and Tibetans were given the technology of …
Holly Gayley, “Love Letters from Golok: A Tantric Couple in Modern Tibet” (Columbia UP, 2016)
Often when people think of Tibetan Buddhism they have a limited vision of that social reality, perhaps one that imagines monks sitting …
Sida Liu and Terence C. Halliday, “Criminal Defense in China: The Politics of Lawyers at Work” (Cambridge UP, 2016)
Sida Liu and Terence C. Halliday spent ten years interviewing criminal defense attorneys throughout China in order to compile the evidence on …
Bryan D. Lowe, “Ritualized Writing: Buddhist Practice and Scriptural Cultures in Ancient Japan” (U of Hawaii Press, 2017)
In his recent monograph, Ritualized Writing: Buddhist Practice and Scriptural Cultures in Ancient Japan (University of Hawaii Press, 2017), Bryan D. Lowe …
Jayde Lin Roberts, “Mapping Chinese Rangoon: Place and Nation among the Sino-Burmese” (U. Washington Press, 2016)
In recent years, scholarship on Burma, or Myanmar, has undergone a renaissance. Jayde Lin Roberts’ Mapping Chinese Rangoon: Place and Nation among …
Akiko Takenaka, “Yasukuni Shrine: History, Memory, and Japan’s Unending Postwar” (U. of Hawaii Press, 2015)
Akiko Takenaka’s new book looks carefully at Yasukuni Shrine as a war memorial, examining its role in waging war, honoring the dead, …
Morgan Pitelka, “Spectacular Accumulation: Material Culture, Tokugawa Ieyasu, and Samurai Sociability” (U. of Hawaii Press, 2016)
Morgan Pitelka’s new book looks closely at the material culture of the Three Unifiers of the late sixteenth century in Japan– Oda …
Paul Roquet, “Ambient Media: Japanese Atmospheres of Self” (U. of Minnesota Press, 2016)
Paul Roquet’s wonderful new book begins with an offering of jellyfish and proceeds to teach us how to read the air. Ambient …
Mark R. E. Meulenbeld, “Demonic Warfare: Daoism, Territorial Networks, and the History of a Ming Novel” (U. of Hawaii Press, 2015)
Mark R. E. Meulenbeld’s new book looks closely at the relationship between vernacular novels and vernacular rituals in Ming China. Focusing on …
Kirk A. Denton, “Exhibiting the Past: Historical Memory and the Politics of Museums in Postsocialist China” (U. of Hawaii Press, 2014)
Kirk A. Denton‘s recent book explores the role of the state in China in shaping particular visions of the past through work …
Christopher Bondy, “Voice, Silence, and Self: Negotiations of Buraku Identity in Contemporary Japan” (Harvard Asia Center, 2015)
“You are a member of a minority group but do not know it. How is this possible?” Christopher Bondy’s new book explores …
Agnieszka Joniak-Lüthi, “The Han: China’s Diverse Majority” (U of Washington Press, 2015)
Agnieszka Joniak-Lüthi’s new book opens with a series of questions that animate the study. They include but are not limited to: What …
Paul A. Christensen, “Japan, Alcoholism, and Masculinity: Suffering Sobriety in Tokyo” (Lexington Books, 2014)
Paul A. Christensen‘s new book is a thoughtful ethnography of drinking, drunkenness, and male sociability in modern urban Japan. Focusing on two …
Joseph D. Hankins, “Working Skin: Making Leather, Making a Multicultural Japan” (U of California Press, 2014)
Joseph D. Hankins‘s marvelous new ethnography of the contemporary Buraku people looks at the labor involved in “identifying, dismantling, and reproducing” the …
Tine M. Gammeltoft, “Haunting Images: A Cultural Account of Selective Reproduction in Vietnam” (University of California Press, 2014)
Tine Gammeltoft‘s new book explores the process of reproductive decision making in contemporary Hanoi. Haunting Images: A Cultural Account of Selective Reproduction …
Anne Allison, “Precarious Japan” (Duke University Press, 2013)
“[All] I want to eat is a rice ball.” This was the last entry in the diary of a 52-year-old man who …
Marc L. Moskowitz, “Go Nation: Chinese Masculinities and the Game of Weiqi in China” (University of California Press, 2013)
In contemporary China, the game of Weiqi (also known as Go) represents many things at the same time: the military power of …