STUDIES OF THE WEAI BOOK SERIES Franz Prichard (Columbia University Press, 2019) For information from the publisher, please click here. In the postwar years, an eruption of urbanization took place across Japan, from its historical central cities to the outer reaches of the archipelago. During the 1960s and 1970s, Japanese literary and visual media took a deep … [Read more...]
The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: When Total Empire Met Total War
STUDIES OF THE WEAI BOOK SERIES Jeremy A. Yellen (Cornell University Press, 2019) For information from the publisher, please click here. In The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, Jeremy Yellen exposes the history, politics, and intrigue that characterized the era when Japan's "total empire" met the total war of World War II. He illuminates the ways in which the … [Read more...]
Thought Crime: Ideology and State Power in Interwar Japan
STUDIES OF THE WEAI BOOK SERIES Max M. Ward (Duke University Press, 2019) For information from the publisher, please click here. In Thought Crime Max M. Ward explores the Japanese state's efforts to suppress political radicalism in the 1920s and 1930s. Ward traces the evolution of an anti-radical law called the Peace Preservation Law, from its initial application to … [Read more...]
Aesthetic Life: Beauty and Art in Modern Japan
STUDIES OF THE WEAI BOOK SERIES Miya Elise Mizuta Lippit (Harvard University Asia Center, 2019) For information from the publisher, please click here. This study of modern Japan engages the fields of art history, literature, and cultural studies, seeking to understand how the “beautiful woman” (bijin) emerged as a symbol of Japanese culture during the Meiji period … [Read more...]
Electrified Voices: How the Telephone, Phonograph, and Radio Shaped Modern Japan, 1868–1945
STUDIES OF THE WEAI BOOK SERIES Kerim Yasar (Columbia University Press, 2018) For information from the publisher, please click here. Long before karaoke’s ubiquity and the rise of global brands such as Sony, Japan was a place where new audio technologies found eager users and contributed to new cultural forms. In Electrified Voices, Kerim Yasar traces the origins of … [Read more...]
