Asian history Books

Book SynopsisRise of a Japanese Chinatown focuses on a Chinese immigrant community in the Japanese port city of Yokohama from the Sino-Japanese War of 18941895 to the normalization of Sino-Japanese ties in 1972 and beyond. It tells the story of how Chinese immigrants found an enduring place within a monoethnic state during periods of war and peace.

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Book SynopsisTrent E. Maxey documents how religion came to be seen as the "greatest problem" by the architects of the modern Japanese state. Maxey shows that in Meiji Japan, religion designated a cognitive and social pluralism that resisted direct state control. It also provided the state with a means to contain, regulate, and neutralize that plurality.

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Book SynopsisMelek Ortabasi reassesses the influence of Yanagita Kunio (18751962), a folk scholar and elite bureaucrat, in shaping modern Japan's cultural identity. Only the second book-length English-language study of Yanagita, this book moves beyond his pioneering work in folk studies to reveal the full range of his contributions as a public intellectual.

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Book SynopsisHiraku Shimoda places the origin of modern Japanese regionalism in the tense relationship between region and nation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This study shows that “region,” often seen as a hard, natural place that impedes national unity, is in fact a supple spatial category that can be made to reinforce nationalist sensibilities.

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Book SynopsisK. E. Brashier examines practices of memorializing the dead in early imperial China. After surveying how learning in this period relied on memorization and recitation, he treats the parameters name, age, and kinship as ways of identifying a person in Han public memory, as well as the media responsible for preserving the deceased person's identity.

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Book SynopsisWai-yee Li examines the discursive space of women in seventeenth-century China. Using texts written by women or by men writing in a feminine voice, as well as writings that turn women into signifiers of lamentation or nostalgia, Li probes the emotional and psychological turmoil of the Ming-Qing transition and subsequent moments of national trauma.

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Book SynopsisUnder the Ancestors' Eyes elucidates the role of Neo-Confucianism as an ideological and political device by which the elite in Korea regained and maintained dominance during the Choson period. Using historical and social anthropological methodology, Martina Deuchler highlights Korea's distinctive elevation of the social over the political.

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Book SynopsisThe Chinese Communist welfare state was established with the goal of eradicating income inequality. Paradoxically, it widened that gap, undermining a primary objective of Mao Zedong's revolution. Nara Dillon traces the origins of the Chinese welfare state from the 1940s to the 1960s to uncover the reasons why the state failed to achieve this goal.

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Book SynopsisFocusing on Japan’s Kwantung Leasehold and Railway Zone in China’s northeastern provinces, Emer O’Dwyer traces the history of Japan’s prewar Manchurian empire over four decades to show how South Manchuria was naturalized as a Japanese space and how this process contributed to the success of the Japanese army’s early 1930s takeover of Manchuria.

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Book SynopsisIn Defensive Positions, Noell Wilson shows how control of coastal defense by regional domains exacerbated the shogunate's inability to respond to major military and political challenges as Japan transitioned from an early modern system of parcelized, local maritime defense to one of centralized, national security in the nineteenth century.

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Book SynopsisThe History of Akbar by Abu’l-Fazl is one of the most important works of Indo-Persian history and a touchstone of prose artistry. In this volume, Humayun’s turbulent reign ends, and Akbar ascends his father’s throne.Trade ReviewAs with the first volume, the second volume is readable and interesting, with many tidbits that delight the reader…All in all, the second volume of The History of Akbar is an interesting and valuable primary source narrative on the origins of one of history’s most consequential empires. -- Akhilesh Pillalamarri * The Diplomat *Of all the great monarchs to have ruled over India—a land whose history is richer and more turbulent than that of almost any other—the one who most retains our modern-day attention is Akbar, Mughal emperor from 1556 to 1605…[The History of Akbar] includes accounts of his court and his governance, as well as of the wars, alliances and intrigues of his time…Thackston’s translation is the first complete rendition into English of Abu’l-Fazl’s Persian text since Henry Beveridge, a British orientalist and imperial civil servant, completed his version in 1921…Thackston’s English is modern and…[his] translation…is impressively meticulous. -- Tunku Varadarajan * Wall Street Journal *At a time when Hindutva historians are eager to distort the history of Muslim invasions in order to deepen religious cleavages and consolidate vote banks, [Abu’l-Fazl's] elaboration of Akbar’s legacy as a tolerant Muslim ruler of a non-Muslim majority is an important reminder of how Indian society has evolved. -- Pragya Tiwari * India at LSE blog *We can only welcome an undertaking like the Murty Classical Library of India, which intends to inject fresh blood directly into the circulatory system of the English language. Any intelligent reader cannot fail to be favorably impressed in the presence of the variegated offerings of the series’ first titles…The Murty Classical Library offers a surprising array of texts that are in any case capable of broadening the all-too-restricted horizons of the average Western reader. -- Roberto Calasso * New York Review of Books *

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Book SynopsisFor 250 years the Turkic Muslims of Altishahr, who now call themselves Uyghurs, have cultivated a sense of history and identity that challenges Beijing's national narrative. The roots of this history run deeper than recent conflicts, Rian Thum says, to a time when manuscripts and pilgrimage along the Silk Road dominated understandings of the past.Trade ReviewIn The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History, [Thum] documents how the Muslims of the region now called Xinjiang understood their past in the three centuries before the Cultural Revolution. Then he explains how that historical identity was torn apart, by inside and outside forces, in the course of the 20th century… What makes Sacred Routes so valuable is its coverage of both the modern and pre-modern periods, taking us back before the Chinese conquest of Altishahr. This enables Thum to show what happened to the older cultural technologies of manuscript, shrine, and pilgrimage in the age of mass printing, competing nationalisms, and commercial tourism… Refusing to reduce his ‘biography of history’ in Altishahr to a simplistic binary of oppression and opposition, Thum instead leads readers beyond the familiar ideologies of modern times toward older ways of knowing and belonging. The empathy and magnitude of this humanist project show the experience of the past in a society few have tried to understand in its own terms… This is Uyghur history as everyman’s history. -- Nile Green * Los Angeles Review of Books *A pioneering work. The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History explores the complex relationship between history production, social practice, and space, and traces the transformation of specific historical genres in response to changing political contexts and the increasing role of the state. By examining the development of manuscript culture and technology, it provides a new perspective on the study of the history of the region. -- Ildikó Bellér-Hann, University of CopenhagenThum’s brilliant depiction of historical practice in Altishahr—Chinese Central Asia—is nothing less than a new understanding of what history is, how it is practiced, and how it works. The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History shows how the interplay of shrine pilgrimage, tazkirah recitation, tomb graffiti, recombinant manuscripts, and later, printed biographies, reflected and constituted a historical community in Xinjiang that was not dynastic, religious, or national but still comprised a powerful and pervasive identity. This book should be read not only by specialists on China, Central Asia, and the Islamic world, but by all historians, for its insights into alternative but vital modes of historiography on the limes of Eurasian empire and the cusp of colonial modernity. -- James A. Millward, Georgetown University

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Book SynopsisIn a remote Himalayan village in 1721, the Jesuit priest Ippolito Desideri wrote a treatise in classical Tibetan intended to refute key Buddhist doctrines and dispel the darkness of idolatry from Tibet. Dispelling the Darkness provides extended excerpts from this unfinished masterpiece and a full translation of a companion work.Trade ReviewThe Jesuit missionary Ippolito Desideri’s engagement with Tibetan Buddhism in his Tibetan writings combine a profound understanding of its philosophy and theology with a closely-argued, penetrating critique of some of its tenets, particularly rebirth and emptiness. This critique is articulated in the two treatises most ably and lucidly translated here by Donald Lopez and Thupten Jinpa, and their excellent introduction and notes provide the intellectual and historical context needed to fully appreciate Desideri’s arguments. Dispelling the Darkness is an important contribution to our understanding of the ongoing encounter between Tibetan Buddhism and Christianity. -- Michael Sweet, author of Mission to TibetDispelling the Darkness brilliantly makes available the remarkable Ippolito Desideri, the Jesuit missionary and scholar who in a few short years achieved great erudition in Tibetan language and culture and wrote several of the first treatises, in Italian and Tibetan, about the country, its society and religions. His Essence of the Christian Religion and Inquiry concerning the Doctrines of Previous Lives and Emptiness at long last receive due attention here, by expert translations from the original Tibetan and by masterful contextual essays putting Desideri’s work in the context of Tibetan and European, Buddhist and Christian beliefs and practices. Donald Lopez and Thupten Jinpa are to be congratulated for enhancing our knowledge of Desideri in such meticulous and insightful detail, thus shedding clear light on a remarkable moment in the encounter of Europe and Asia and the great drama of the Jesuits in Asia. -- Francis X. Clooney, Harvard UniversityWe, and all who are interested in the Jesuits, the history of missions, Buddhism, Tibet, and the art of translation, are indebted to the authors of this sumptuous volume for translating the texts (selections from the monumental Inquiry and the whole of the more manageable Essence) into flowing English, and providing introductions both to the tragic story of Desideri and to his writings. -- John Arnold * Church Times *In the winter of 1727, Jesuit missionary Ippolito Desideri returned to Rome from a three-year stay in Tibet, carrying with him two unusual treatises written in classical Tibetan: a critique of Buddhist doctrine, composed in the high philosophical discourse of Tibetan Buddhist scholasticism, and a Roman Catholic catechism. Remarkably, both had been written by Desideri himself: an outstanding scholarly accomplishment and landmark in the study of Buddhist-Christian relations. Dispelling the Darkness is the first scholarly English translation/study of these works. Lopez and Jinpa, two of the most respected Buddhist studies scholars in North America, introduce each translated text (or textual excerpt) with general historical and philosophical context, followed by detailed commentary on Desideri’s use of Tibetan literary genres and conventions. The translations are pristine (Jinpa has been the Dalai Lama’s principal translator since 1985) and the introductory materials erudite yet lively. -- L. Harrington * Choice *

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Book SynopsisTimothy J. Van Compernolle reconsiders the rise of the modern novel in Japan by connecting the genre to new discourses on ambition and social mobility, arguing that social mobility is the privileged lens through which Meiji novelists explored abstract concepts of national belonging, social hierarchy, and the new space of an industrializing nation.

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Book SynopsisFor South Koreans, the early 1960s to late 1970s were the best and worst of times—a period of unprecedented economic growth and deepening political oppression. Carter J. Eckert finds the roots of this dramatic socioeconomic transformation in the country’s long history of militarization, personified in South Korea’s paramount leader, Park Chung Hee.Trade ReviewA milestone in the literature of modern East Asia. Through close and careful examination, Eckert shows that Korean military leaders, preeminently Park Chung Hee, learned how warfare and industrial development could go hand-in-hand in the hothouse of 1930s Manchuria. They later used that model in the South to accomplish one of the most rapid developmental surges in world history. This is an enormous contribution to our understanding of modern Korea and East Asia. -- Bruce Cumings, author of Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern HistoryProdigiously researched and fluently written, Eckert’s book throws fascinating light on how Imperial Japan’s harsh colonial rule in Korea and Manchuria bequeathed a legacy of both authoritarianism and economic transformation to South Korea. This is a truly original contribution to our understanding of Japan’s as well as Korea’s modern history. -- John W. Dower, author of Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War IIThis is a profound and important work, the culmination of decades of research and thought by a leader in the field. Timely, deeply researched, and engagingly written, this book occupies a unique place in the scholarship on modern Korea, and addresses a topic whose impact extends well beyond Korean and East Asian history. -- Charles K. Armstrong, author of Tyranny of the Weak: North Korea and the World, 1950-1992Eckert, one of our most distinguished historians of Korea, comprehensively details the revealing background to how Park Chung Hee acquired the dedicated spirit to lead Korea’s modernization: spiritual training in Japanese military academies. -- Ezra F. Vogel, author of Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of ChinaA masterly treatment of the pre-1945 origins of militarism that would later become manifest in the programs, leadership style, development philosophy, and political tactics of the Park Chung Hee era. This crucial work will have an enormous impact on the debates surrounding a number of issues in the postwar history of Korea. -- Michael E. Robinson, author of Korea's Twentieth-Century Odyssey: A Short HistoryThis pathbreaking book contributes to both modern Korean history and Japanese colonial history by exploring the instruction that Park Chung-hee (who went on to lead South Korea from 1961 to 1979) and others of his generation received when they were officer trainees in the Japanese colonial army in the 1940s…The book is not a biography, but it uses Park’s early career as a window onto Japanese militarism, which shaped the ethos of the men who later guided the first decades of an independent South Korea. -- Andrew J. Nathan * Foreign Affairs *Less a standard biography than an analysis, through the figure of Park Chung Hee, of Korea’s authoritarian past…The book is a work of historical ethnography demonstrating how Japan’s militarist ideas helped form modern Korea…Although South Korea has exorcised Park’s military legacy, this biography uncovers strands of modern identity that continue to bedevil the country. -- Robert S. Boynton * Bookforum *Eckert meticulously examines how Japan’s military occupation of Korea (1910–45) and Manchuria (1931–45) shaped the future contours of Korean politics and society to the detriment of individual rights and democracy…Eckert has delivered a robust analysis of the consequences of continuous conflict on the Korean peninsula and the resulting permeation of military values into various echelons of society. By interpreting the history of twentieth-century South Korea as a product of long-term geopolitical factors in both East Asia and the wider world, Park Chung Hee and Modern Korea represents a salient paradigmatic shift in the study of the region and thus richly deserves the highest plaudits from the scholarly community. -- Jeff Roquen * LSE Review of Books *

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Book SynopsisRemembrances, by acclaimed poet Mir Muhammad Taqi Mir, is a remarkable example of Indo-Persian autobiography, offering a vivid picture of political events and intrigues from 1760 to 1789. The Persian text in the Naskh script, including a series of jokes and anecdotes printed here for the first time, accompanies a newly revised English translation.

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Book SynopsisThe rapid rise and fall of the southern kingdom of Wu inspired many memorials in the former capital city of Suzhou, including the building of temples, shrines, and monuments. Analyzing the history of Wu as recorded in ancient Chinese texts and literature, Olivia Milburn illuminates the cultural endurance of this powerful but short-lived kingdom.

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Book SynopsisFacing the Monarch examines the role of rhetoric in shaping the dynamic between Chinese ministers and monarchs in the era between the Spring and Autumn period and the later Han dynasty. Essays analyze classical Chinese works to provide fresh perspectives on the impact of political circumstances on modes of expression.

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Book SynopsisMonarchical presidential regimes in the Arab world looked as though they would last indefinitely—until events in Tunisia and Egypt made clear their time was up. This is the first book to lay bare the dynamics of a governmental system that largely defined the Arab Middle East in the twentieth century, and the popular opposition they engendered.Trade ReviewEvents have enhanced its timeliness, as it is a kind of obituary for the ‘monarchical presidencies’ of the Arab world. The book looks at the local differences and underlying similarities between the region’s leaders… Owen’s book provides a sharp look at the tyrannies the Arab spring is attempting to sweep away. * The Economist *Owen suggests that like Mafia dons, Arab presidents for life observed one another and learned from one another’s experiences and argues that the Arab League has provided a loose supportive framework for their ambitions. Although the shadows of monarchical presidents will be cast long into the future, Owen is confident that the uprisings have brought their era to an end. * Foreign Affairs *A thoughtful and incisive evaluation of Arab political authoritarianism in all its components. Owen points out the many ways in which Arab Presidents and Kings imitated one another, with Presidential sons following—or attempting to follow—their fathers, and all relying on extensive security services and webs of patronage. His analysis of the personalization of power challenges recent efforts to distinguish Arab monarchies from their Presidential counterparts, and lays bare the internal logic of such personalized security states. As an historian, Owen is sensitive, and admirably transparent, about the limits of our knowledge about the inner workings of these regimes. But his brief discussions of each country effectively convey both the commonalities and differences across the cases. Owen’s highly readable book serves as a fitting requiem for a system of rule which long seemed immovable, has now been exposed in all of its flawed brutality, but seems likely to adapt to new structural conditions rather than simply fade away. * Foreign Policy *In charting with care the rise of Arab presidents for life, Roger Owen has pioneered a new strand in the academic debate on authoritarianism in the Middle East and North Africa. * London Review of Books *Owen, one of the world’s leading historians of the modern Middle East, examines the specific historical reasons that led to the rise of the authoritarian presidents in the post colonial era, but his real interest is how these individuals institutionalized power to become, in practice, dynastic monarchs… Among the host of issues Owen raises, of particular interest are why some Arab countries have gone this route and others not, similarities and differences between kings and presidents, the different kinds of dynastic presidents, comparative succession practices, and the question of Arab exceptionalism vis-à-vis other regions, such as central Africa or post-Soviet central Asia. His meditations on what to expect in the immediate future are judicious, insightful, and wise. This very timely book serves almost as a textbook on recent and current Arab politics. * Choice *No other book solely addresses this topic or examines it with the same scope or historical depth. Highly recommended for anyone interested in current foreign affairs or the history and future of modern Arab states. * Library Journal *Timely… Owen reveals how the Arab Spring demonstrates the inherent contradictions and weaknesses in the regimes, showing how their creation (and fall) resulted from modern political and economic circumstances… This comprehensive and balanced history illuminates the current upheaval. * Publishers Weekly *This book delivers, at precisely the right moment and in the right measure, the historical context needed for understanding the significance of the popular uprisings that are currently transforming the Arab world. In fluid and accessible prose, Roger Owen, the leading historian of the Middle East, demonstrates that the phenomenon of ‘Arab presidents for life’ is a product of modern historical circumstances, not a pre-determined outcome of the ‘Arab mind,’ a ‘tribal’ mentality, or the Islamic faith. The key to Owen’s analysis is what he calls the ‘demonstration effect’: Arab leaders and regimes consciously borrowed from each other’s internal security playbooks in order to solidify their power and prolong their rule. In so doing, they dug their own collective grave.An accessible yet comprehensive review of the political history of the modern Middle East, made all the more relevant by the convulsions of the past year. Owen’s dismantling of the ‘Arab exceptionalism’ argument, which has formed the basis of so many accounts of authoritarian power in the region, is historically and sociologically persuasive. He successfully explains how countries with very different histories have nonetheless produced political systems with such strong resemblances. Thoughtful, full of nuance, and mercifully free of jargon, Owen’s writing carries the reader along at a terrific pace, providing both the grand sweep of history and the focused perspicacity of political analysis.

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Book SynopsisScholars have described the eighteenth century in China as a time of “state activism” and often associate the Taiping Rebellion and postbellum restoration efforts with the origins of elite activism. Seunghyun Han, however, argues that the ascendance of elite activism can be traced to the Jiaqing and Daoguang reigns in the early nineteenth century.

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Book SynopsisIn Red Legacies in China, Mao-era legacies serve as a framework to examine the cultural productions and afterlives of the communist revolution in order to understand China’s continuities and transformations from socialism to postsocialism. Essays discuss arts, literature and film, language and thought, architecture, museums, and memorials.

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Book SynopsisChina’s efforts to modernize yielded a kleptocracy characterized by corruption, wealth inequality, and social tensions. Rejecting conventional platitudes about the resilience of Party rule, Minxin Pei gathers unambiguous evidence that beneath China’s facade of ever-expanding prosperity and power lies a Leninist state in an advanced stage of decay.Trade ReviewPei makes a powerful and convincing assertion that China’s party-state is both predatory and decaying as he analyzes the nature of destructive collusive behavior. An important book by one of our leading analysts of Chinese politics. -- Joseph Fewsmith, author of China since TiananmenWhile many debate about how capitalist and market-driven China is, Pei shows in this sobering book that the real issue is the quality of Chinese capitalism. No one has detailed the evolution of corruption in China as ably and as comprehensively. An excellent work, whose timing could not be better. -- Yasheng Huang, author of Capitalism with Chinese CharacteristicsPei’s penetrating account of what he terms the ‘rapacious crony capitalism’ spawned by China’s economic rise is lucid, provocative, and deeply disturbing. This is a distinctive contribution to debates about the staying power of China’s political system and the limits of its model of economic development. -- Andrew G. Walder, author of China Under MaoPei’s book is quietly devastating. In sober, restrained language, he exposes the full gravity of corruption in China. Presenting a wealth of evidence, he shows that this is not the unfortunate by-product of rapid economic growth but the result of strategic choices by the party. With clinical precision, Mr Pei explains how corruption operates at every level, perverting each branch of the party-state and subverting the political authority of the regime…This book is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand China today, or engage with it at any level, in any field. * The Economist *This is an unparalleled and meticulous analysis of the deeply embedded and widespread corruption engulfing the world’s second-biggest economy… Pei has pulled apart the spiderwebs of Chinese corruption by scrutinizing the published accounts of more than 250 of those penalized for bribery. The details, down to their single or multiple mistresses, orgies and the involvement of their families, make the narrative and conclusions vivid and convincing… In his path-breaking analysis, Pei reveals the vast scale in post-Tiananmen China of ‘collusive corruption’… [An] overwhelmingly convincing and dispiriting book. -- Jonathan Mirsky * Times Higher Education *Xi Jinping claims to be eliminating corruption from China’s economic and political systems. Pei, one of the world’s most knowledgeable scholars, argues that this is impossible because corruption is the system. The liberalization of markets has combined with the absence of clear property rights to allow the well-connected to accumulate vast fortunes through looting state property. -- Martin Wolf * Financial Times *As Minxin Pei notes in a brilliant book, China’s Crony Capitalism, it is all too easy for a would-be strongman to use the charge of corruption as a cudgel against rivals. Yet it is so effective precisely because it is plausible. Using evidence published by the Chinese authorities, Pei shows that collusive corruption is pervasive. It distorts the economy,degrades administration and robs the party of its social legitimacy. -- Martin Wolf * Financial Times *Minxin Pei vividly demonstrates how corruption in China is not merely a governance challenge: it is a fact of life. Corruption permeates business, politics, and even personal relationships to a startling degree…It is a damning portrait, in which China resembles the United States during the Gilded Age, complete with robber barons, crime bosses, and dirty politicians—and with all the excesses intensified by authoritarian one-party rule…Pei’s bleak view is sobering, especially because his conclusions are based on careful analysis of a rich data set. -- Dali Yang * Foreign Affairs *

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Book SynopsisMany Allied POWs in the Pacific theater of World War II suffered terribly. But abuse wasn’t a matter of Japanese policy, as is commonly assumed. Sarah Kovner shows poorly trained guards and rogue commanders inflicted the most horrific damage. Camps close to centers of imperial power tended to be less violent, and many POWs died from friendly fire.Trade ReviewPrisoners of the Empire forces readers to rethink the morality-tale version of cruel Japanese treatment of Allied POWs. Kovner is unflinching in presenting harsh treatment by Japanese prison commanders or guards and unsparing in her attention to racism on all sides. Above all, she is clear-eyed in explaining how confusion and ignorance, more than consistent policy, shaped this tragic episode in the fog of war. -- Andrew Gordon, author of A Modern History of JapanThis innovative study of Japanese prisoner-of-war (POW) camps in Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and Singapore during World War II explores how they were administered and what the prisoners experienced…Kovner’s vivid, detailed inquiry throws light on a host of subjects, including the racial and gender attitudes of the many cultures that encountered one another in wartime Asia. -- Andrew J. Nathan * Foreign Affairs *A rigorous and wide-ranging study of Japan’s treatment of POWs during WWII…This revisionist history adds essential nuance and depth to an emotionally charged subject. * Publishers Weekly *[An] excellent and unemotional account…She is not unsympathetic to the former POWs but provides a nuanced and dispassionate interpretation of what happened to those who became Japanese prisoners between 1942 and 1945. -- J. E. Hoare * Asian Affairs *The main thesis of this book holds true across Asia: simplistic notions of culturally determined cruelty do not fully explain the maltreatment of POWs, even though the conduct of the Pacific war was clearly infused with racism on both sides. The chaos of war, and the plea of ‘military necessity’—alas, so often the trump card during warfare—played a major role in this woeful erosion of humanity. -- Joan Beaumont * Australian Book Review *A ground-breaking survey of selected Japanese POW camps during the Asia–Pacific War that will be the starting point for all future studies of this topic. -- Samuel H. Yamashita * Journal of Japanese Studies *A much-needed corrective to our understanding of Japanese treatment of Allied prisoners. The book is well researched, and the author’s ability to work with Japanese-language sources makes this an extremely valuable contribution to the field of POW scholarship. Kovner’s careful consideration of the source material, her clear and fluid prose, and her critical eye provide a nuanced analysis that is long overdue. -- Derek R. Mallett * Journal of Military History *This is a significant contribution to the history of the Pacific War and the continuing discourse on prisoners of war more generally…Kovner successfully blends military, social, administrative, and diplomatic history into a highly readable study. -- Michael Sturma * Pacific Affairs *Kovner argues that there was nothing inherent in the Japanese character or culture that led to the inhumane treatment of POWs by Japan during the Pacific War…Makes an important contribution to our understanding of internment practices throughout the twentieth century. -- Mahon Murphy * Monumenta Nipponica *Standing on impressive transnational research in government and nongovernmental archives, Kovner complicates the popular consensus that Japan’s treatment of Allied prisoners of war (POWs) during World War II was singularly cruel and a systematic effort. By meticulously tracing the steps and missteps of Japan’s management of POW camps across its vast wartime empire, Kovner adjudicates from official records that there is no evidence of any top-down directive or an inherent quality of Japanese culture that explains why prisoners suffered. Instead, Kovner cogently argues that maltreatment resulted from the absence of planning and indifference among senior Japanese officials. -- Sandra H. Park * Journal of Asian Studies *Kovner reformats the complex ‘morality play’ depicted in Western history of prisoner of war suffering during World War II. Looking at the entirety of the Japanese empire at war, and focusing on the camps as locales within a cascade of battles for power, she challenges preconceptions that abuse stemmed solely from bushido ideals gone wrong or specific policies of cruelty. By comparatively investigating a vast range of experiences and geographic sites, Kovner overturns our stereotyped perceptions and challenges our understanding of POW history. -- Barak Kushner, author of Men to Devils, Devils to Men: Japanese War Crimes and Chinese JusticeIn a major work of original scholarship, Kovner reveals that who lived and who died often resulted not from policy but incompetence—poor training, lack of planning, disregard for anything but military priorities. With impressive daring, she situates camp lives within the larger context of occupation policies, diplomacy, and international law, and describes the multiethnic world of hundreds of thousands of POWs, civilian internees including women and children, and guards in the Philippines, Singapore, Japan, and Korea. Prisoners of the Empire is a signal critical accomplishment. -- Sabine Frühstück, author of Playing War: Children and the Paradoxes of Modern Militarism in JapanIn this ambitious study, Kovner moves beyond threadbare tropes of bushido and surrender-as-shameful to persuasively argue that Japanese treatment of POWs during World War II varied greatly across time and space—and cannot be fully understood without the broader context of Japanese diplomacy with the West, propaganda and strategic considerations, and the breakdown of discipline and logistics as Japan’s empire collapsed. Elegantly written and compulsively readable, this accessible narrative history will be of great interest to scholars and general readers alike. -- Nick Kapur, author of Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo

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Book SynopsisRichard Davis has expertly crafted a stirring narrative of the last years of Song, focusing on loyalist resistance to Mongol domination as more than just a political event. Seen from the perspective of the conquered, the phenomenon of martyrdom reveals much about the cultural history of the Song.Trade ReviewDavis's study is the fullest modern narrative and interpretive account of the fall of the Song Dynasty at the hands of the Mongol Yuan...[It] is richly informative on politics and personages...This book will interest students of gender, suicide, and loyalism as well as Song history. * Choice *

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Book SynopsisCultural Revolution Culture, often denigrated as pure propaganda, was liked not only in its heyday but continues to be enjoyed today. Considering this artmusic, stage works, posters, comics, literaturein its longue durée, Barbara Mittler suggests it builds on a tradition of earlier works, allowing for proliferation in contemporary China.

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Book SynopsisAnna Andreeva challenges the twentieth-century narrative of Shinto as an unbroken, monolithic tradition. By studying how and why religious practitioners affiliated with different religious institutions responded to esoteric Buddhism’s teachings, this book demonstrates that kami worship in medieval Japan was a result of complex negotiations.

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Book SynopsisLi Mengyang (1473–1530) was a scholar-official who initiated the literary archaist movement that sought to restore ancient styles of prose and poetry in sixteenth-century China. Chang Woei Ong situates Li’s quest to redefine literati learning as a way to build a perfect social order in the context of intellectual transitions since the Song dynasty.

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Book SynopsisCourtesans, Concubines, and the Cult of Female Fidelity traces changing gender relations in China from the tenth to fourteenth centuries. By taking women—and men’s relationships with women—seriously, this book makes a case for the centrality of gender relations in the social, political, and intellectual life of the Song and Yuan dynasties.

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Book SynopsisChina’s leaders aspire to the prosperity, political legitimacy, and stability that flowed from America’s New Deal, but they are irrevocably opposed to the independent trade unions and mass mobilization that brought it about. Cynthia Estlund’s crisp comparative analysis makes China’s labor unrest and reform legible to Western readers.Trade ReviewThis highly readable story of the recent struggle of China’s workers for a better life, and the Communist Party’s complex responses to their demands, will surely meet the urgent need for greater understanding of this dynamic, non-transparent nation. Cynthia Estlund, a leading expert on American labor, has given us a balanced and sophisticated picture of China’s vastly different, rapidly changing labor scene. Like all great comparative studies, it also moves us to reconsider the accomplishments and drawbacks of our own government and even suggests what we might learn from the Chinese. -- Jerome A. Cohen, New York University School of LawThis eloquent account of the fundamental issues facing China’s workers, employers, and officials is an accessible but highly nuanced entrée to the world-historical drama unfolding in the PRC. Estlund has masterfully identified the essential economic, political, and legal dynamics that will determine the fate of the world’s largest and most restive working class. -- Eli Friedman, Cornell UniversityFor those who want to know more about the current status of labor in China, A New Deal for China’s Workers? is a must-read. Addressing labor issues in the United States and China, Estlund goes beyond the common view that workplaces in China are all sweatshops even as she questions China’s prospects for controlled liberalization of trade unions and labor NGOs. The results are enlightening and provocative. -- Mary Gallagher, University of MichiganThis is a terrific, eye-opening book. Cynthia Estlund uses her expert knowledge of American labor history and law as a lens through which to examine the turbulent politically and economically fraught world in which hundreds of millions of Chinese workers press for dignity, democracy, and a better material life. From the most exploitative sweatshop to the highest levels of Chinese government and industry, Estlund offers superb guidance to all those puzzled by the near-insurrectionary struggles of the Chinese working class and by the regime’s capacity to channel, accommodate, and suppress this industrial revolt. -- Nelson Lichtenstein, University of California, Santa BarbaraCynthia Estlund provides the most sophisticated and in-depth look ever at China and Chinese workers and their ‘race to the rising bottom.’ Her analysis demonstrates that the Chinese leadership’s fear of an independent ‘organized labor’ movement as a greater threat than ‘organized capital’ or capitalism has actually motivated positive change for Chinese workers. The revealing comparisons of labor law, workplace democracy, and the role of unions between the U.S. and China is stunningly insightful, and will shatter your conventional ideas. -- Andy Stern, Columbia University

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Book SynopsisWhen Portuguese explorers first arrived in India, the maritime passage initiated an exchange of goods as well as ideas. European ambassadors, missionaries, soldiers, and scholars who followed produced a body of knowledge that shaped European thought about India. Sanjay Subrahmanyam tracks these changing ideas over the entire early modern period.Trade ReviewSanjay Subrahmanyam brings his wide learning and wise judgement to a fraught subject—European conceptions of India as they are shaped by exploration, trade, and conquest. Europe's India uncovers the complex ground of knowledge-formation and knowledge-acquisition, of self-presentation and self-understanding, while resisting doctrinal simplicities. This is a thoroughly readable and deeply instructive work. -- Akeel Bilgrami, author of Secularism, Identity, and EnchantmentAs one would expect from Sanjay Subrahmanyam, this is a witty, erudite book with a range that dazzles: from art and art history to science and technology to history and literature. -- David Washbrook, Trinity College, University of Cambridge[A] significant contribution to the field of postcolonial interpretations of European views of India. -- P. P. Barua * Choice *Covering the three centuries between Vasco da Gama’s arrival and the consolidation of the English East India Company’s trading and political dominance by the end of the 1700s, Subrahmanyam evaluates in intricate detail how selected European individuals engaged with the subcontinent over time, and the extent to which common ‘European’ modes of understanding South Asian society gradually emerged…An intellectual and cultural history thoroughly rooted in the politics and institutions of changing times, Europe’s India charts the social, occupational and ideological differences that marked Europeans who travelled to pre-modern India, together with their diverse regional origins and convergences. -- Elizabeth Buettner * Times Literary Supplement *

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Book SynopsisThe Epic of Ram, Volume 3 details the schemes of Ram's stepmother, who thwarts his installation on the throne of Avadh. Ram calmly accepts fourteen years of forest exile with his wife, Sita, and younger brother Lakshman. This edition features the Avadhi text in the Devanagari script alongside the English translation.Trade Review[A] cause for celebration—one of India’s most influential texts has been translated into contemporary English by a pivotal scholar who has devoted much of his career to the text, and its afterlives…Gives us a firm starting point for charting horizons and pathways into still-living traditions. -- Nikhil Govind * Scroll.in *Lutgendorf manages a simplicity, elegance and dignity, whereas attempts to rhyme or alliterate by other translators have often resulted in bathos…If this graceful and eminently readable translation can win more readers for this great scripture, which is also the greatest poem ever written in Hindi, it would have served to reaffirm Tulsi’s belief in the countless multiplicity of Ramayans. -- Harish Trivedi * IIC Quarterly *

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Book SynopsisThe Epic of Ram, Volume 4 turns to the story of Ram’s younger half-brother Bharat. Despite efforts to place him on the throne of Avadh, Bharat refuses, ashamed that Ram has been exiled, and makes a pilgrimage to restore the true heir. This edition features the Avadhi text in the Devanagari script alongside the English translation.Trade Review[A] cause for celebration—one of India’s most influential texts has been translated into contemporary English by a pivotal scholar who has devoted much of his career to the text, and its afterlives…Gives us a firm starting point for charting horizons and pathways into still-living traditions. -- Nikhil Govind * Scroll.in *Lutgendorf manages a simplicity, elegance and dignity, whereas attempts to rhyme or alliterate by other translators have often resulted in bathos…If this graceful and eminently readable translation can win more readers for this great scripture, which is also the greatest poem ever written in Hindi, it would have served to reaffirm Tulsi’s belief in the countless multiplicity of Ramayans. -- Harish Trivedi * IIC Quarterly *

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Book SynopsisW. Puck Brecher overturns standard narratives of wartime Japan’s racial attitudes, focusing on the experiences of Western civilians rather than enemy POWs in Japan. His bold thesis is borne out by a broad mosaic of stories of police harassment, suspicion, relocation, starvation, internment, and torture, as well as extraordinary acts of charity.

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Book SynopsisBrian Steininger revisits Japan’s mid-Heian court of the Tale of Genji and the Pillow Book, where literary Chinese was not only the basis of official administration, but also a medium for political protest, sermons of mourning, and poems of celebration.

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Book SynopsisLisa Yoshikawa explores the role history and historians played in imperial Japan’s nation and empire building from the 1890s to the 1930s. Through a close reading of vast, multilingual sources, Yoshikawa argues that scholarship and politics were inseparable as Japan’s historical profession developed.

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Book SynopsisThese thirteenth-century legal cases from the classic compendium Yuan dianzhang reveal the complex, contradictory inner workings of the Mongol-Yuan legal system, as seen through the prism of divorce, adultery, rape, wife-selling, and other marital disputes. Bettine Birge offers a meticulously annotated translation and analysis.Trade Review[An] exciting addition to the scholarship on the Mongol Yuan empire…An indispensable source for both specialist and general readers who are interested in the social, legal, and gender history of the Mongol empire. -- Daigengna Duoer * Religious Studies Review *Birge has been working on Song and Yuan marriage law for more than two decades and is better qualified than anyone else to do the translation. This is a pleasure to read; she writes lucidly and gracefully. The subjects—law in China, marriage law, the Yuan period—are all ones that will draw readers to the work. Birge’s translation will be used not only by historians of China, but also by scholars and students interested in comparative law, social life and marriage, plus the Yuan dynasty and the Mongols more generally. -- Patricia Buckley Ebrey, author of Emperor HuizongBased on painstaking research on legal decisions concerning marriage during the Yuan dynasty, this work illuminates the contradictions and difficulties the Mongols faced in attempting to develop a consistent approach to marital law. Birge’s descriptions of the Mongol government and the lawmaking process are informative, and her translations accurate and readable. The book offers many revealing insights, including that women instituted many of the legal cases, an indication that they were not as secluded or powerless as commonly thought. -- Morris Rossabi, author of Khubilai Khan: His Life and Times

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Book SynopsisMughal rulers were legendary connoisseurs of the arts, whose patronage attracted poets, artists, and scholars from all parts of the world. Sunil Sharma explores the rise and decline of Persian court poetry in India and the invention of an enduring idea of a literary paradise, perfectly exemplified by the valley of Kashmir.Trade ReviewSunil Sharma’s Mughal Arcadia draws on Persian poetry produced in India to evoke a world that is now as lost and strange as Atlantis or Shangri-La. The Persian poets presented India as a land of wonders and riches, a pastoral paradise. As I read on, an impossible longing came over me—to visit seventeenth century Kashmir and see for myself what the poets described and the miniaturists painted: the spring festivals, harem processions, falcon hunts, well-watered gardens with their fruit trees, Sufis, nightingales, wild dogs, and cities devoted to love and poetry… This exploration of a hitherto largely neglected subject is based on remarkably wide reading and is a credit to scholarship. -- Robert Irwin, author of The Arabian Nights: A Companion and Wonders Will Never CeaseIt is the fragrance of pure Mughal sophistication which wafts through this erudite book. In elegant and eloquent detail, Sharma tells of the Mughal imperial family’s love for nature… Mughal Arcadia’s singularity is that, calling on [Sharma’s] ample scholarly knowledge of Indo-Persian poetry and culture, it offers an account of Mughal history for the non-specialist, including the Mughal love for tended and unspoiled bountiful nature. -- Christine van Ruymbeke * Times Literary Supplement *A celebration and deeply learned account of Persian poetry in Mughal India, this book traces how the idea of Hindustan in the Iranian imagination encountered the actuality of the place and ultimately transformed the literary and aesthetic landscape of the subcontinent. Mughal Arcadia is attractively written, with enthusiasm and erudition, and will delight anyone interested in the magnificent Indo-Persian culture it commemorates. -- Dick Davis, translator of Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of ShirazPersian poets have historically referred to the valley of Kashmir as a ‘second paradise.’ Thanks to Sunil Sharma’s fascinating account of the Mughal court’s love of Persian poets and poetry and its openness to artistic multiculturalism, we understand the full breadth of that paradise. -- Sholeh Wolpé, poet and translator of The Conference of the Birds by AttarSharma…takes us on a whirlwind tour of a hefty slice of the nearly forgotten universe of Mughal Persian poetry. The book is a delight. One emerges from it impressed by the beauty and complexity of Mughal poetry and even more impressed by Sharma’s deft reading skills and ability to translate this tradition for 21st century readers. -- Audrey Truschke * The Wire *

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Book SynopsisYoon Sun Yang argues that the first literary iterations of the Korean individual were female figures in late nineteenth century domestic novels. This study disrupts the canonical account of a non-gendered, linear progress toward modern Korean selfhood and examines translation’s impact on Korea’s construction of modern gender roles.Trade ReviewFrom Domestic Women to Sensitive Young Men is a brilliant account of the uneven emergence of the modern subject in Korean literary fiction, immersing us in the historical circumstances of colonialism, censorship, and the transition to modernity that shaped authors and readers alike in early colonial Korea. Taking a neglected but crucial corpus of novels known as New Fiction that flourished after the Protectorate Treaty in 1905, the book argues that the same circumstances that made the political novel impossible created a genre of domestic fiction where the traumas of transition to a modern society were thrashed out. By returning us to these complex and ambivalent literary figures who served as the unacknowledged earliest iterations of the modern individual, Yoon Sun Yang’s book makes a compelling case for the importance of this genre in understanding early colonial Korea. Written in beautiful, measured prose, this book apprises us of the costs of longing for individuality, modernity, and civilization. A work of comparative literature at its finest. -- Ruth Barraclough, Australian National UniversityYang’s important study challenges hegemonic, male-centered historical narratives of intellectual and literary modernity that are both Korean and universal. The book vouches strongly for the embodied nature of the individual subject, which is never transcendent but is always marked by gender, ethnicity, class, and sexual orientation. Emerging from Yang’s clear, precise, and always insightful prose are thus many of the suppressed Others of Enlightenment rationality—insane women, queer couples, sensitive men, female ghosts, and more. An admirable example of feminist literary scholarship, this book will become a must read for scholars and students of Korean and East Asian literature, comparative literature, gender studies, and postcolonial studies. -- Sunyoung Park, University of Southern CaliforniaYoon Sun Yang’s From Domestic Women to Sensitive Young Men is revisionary scholarship of the best and highest order that will also reach beyond the growing field of Korean literary studies to attract scholars of other national literatures. -- Janet Poole, University of Toronto

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Book SynopsisDo democracies bring about greater equality among their citizens? India embraced universal suffrage in 1947 and yet its citizens are far from realizing equality. The U.S. struggles with intolerance and inequality well into the twenty-first century. Nico Slate offers a new look at the struggle for freedom that linked two former British colonies.Trade ReviewFor most of their histories, India and the United States have been distant lands. And yet, these two countries—both subcontinental in size, both colonized by Britain, both struggling to achieve the promise of democracy—have gazed at each other from afar, entranced by their family resemblance. Nico Slate tells the fascinating, delightful tale of these separated siblings, one that begins with Indians meeting ‘Indians’ and ends with civil disobedience and California yoga studios. -- Daniel Immerwahr, author of Thinking Small: The United States and the Lure of Community DevelopmentNico Slate’s game-changing book on India and the United States invites us to probe anew the meanings of freedom and democracy. Elegantly traversing the boundaries of comparative, transnational, and cultural history, Lord Cornwallis Is Dead is sure to attract a wide range of readers from different disciplines. -- Sandhya Shukla, author of India Abroad: Diasporic Cultures of Postwar America and EnglandAn eloquently written, deeply consequential, and engaging account that recognizes the achievements of the struggle for freedom in the two countries without shying away from the many shortcomings of their particular styles of democracy and their unending struggles for political, social, and economic freedom. * Choice *

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Book SynopsisThe History of Akbar, Volume 5 by Abu’l-Fazl details the seventeenth to twenty-second years of Akbar’s reign, including the conquest of Gujarat, the capture of Rohtas fort from rebel Afghans, and the invasions of Patna and Bengal. The Persian text, presented in the Naskh script, is based on a careful reassessment of primary sources.Trade ReviewOf all the great monarchs to have ruled over India—a land whose history is richer and more turbulent than that of almost any other—the one who most retains our modern-day attention is Akbar, Mughal emperor from 1556 to 1605…[The History of Akbar] includes accounts of his court and his governance, as well as of the wars, alliances and intrigues of his time…Thackston’s translation is the first complete rendition into English of Abu’l-Fazl’s Persian text since Henry Beveridge, a British orientalist and imperial civil servant, completed his version in 1921…Thackston’s English is modern and…[his] translation…is impressively meticulous. -- Tunku Varadarajan * Wall Street Journal *At a time when Hindutva historians are eager to distort the history of Muslim invasions in order to deepen religious cleavages and consolidate vote banks, [Abu’l-Fazl's] elaboration of Akbar’s legacy as a tolerant Muslim ruler of a non-Muslim majority is an important reminder of how Indian society has evolved. -- Pragya Tiwari * India at LSE blog *We can only welcome an undertaking like the Murty Classical Library of India, which intends to inject fresh blood directly into the circulatory system of the English language. Any intelligent reader cannot fail to be favorably impressed in the presence of the variegated offerings of the series’ first titles…The Murty Classical Library offers a surprising array of texts that are in any case capable of broadening the all-too-restricted horizons of the average Western reader. -- Roberto Calasso * New York Review of Books *

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Book SynopsisIn 1960, when Japan revised the postwar treaty that allows a U.S. military presence in Japan, the popular backlash changed the evolution of Japan’s politics and culture, and its global role. Nick Kapur’s analysis helps resolve Japan’s essential paradox as being innovative yet regressive, flexible yet resistant, imaginative yet wedded to tradition.Trade ReviewLucidly written and remarkably informative, Japan at the Crossroads is the book on Anpo and the early 1960s that the field has long needed, and should be required reading on the history of early postwar Japan. -- Eiko Maruko Siniawer * American Historical Review *Magnificent…The introduction is, simply put, the best short history of the Anpo protests that exists in English…This book is essential reading for anyone hoping to explore the aftermath of Anpo in Japan, and indeed the culture of the 1960s and beyond. -- Kendall Heitzman * Journal of Asian Studies *Impressive…This book is destined to become the first point of contact for anyone wanting to understand the antecedents, the course, and the consequences of the Anpo protests through a comprehensive and contemporary lens… Thoroughly engrossing and thought-provoking. -- Simon Avenell * Journal of Japanese Studies *A broad and ambitious work…Makes a strong case for the impact of the 1960 Anpo protests in reshaping Japanese politics and society. -- Patricia G. Steinhoff * Monumenta Nipponica *Broad in scope and fine-grained in analysis, Kapur’s incisive study of public protest and political realignment shows that Japan stands shoulder to shoulder with Europe, the Americas, and the People’s Republic of China as a site of cultural upheaval and political division during the global 1960s. This imaginatively conceptualized, gracefully written book offers a thoroughgoing reconsideration of conflict and compromise during that tumultuous decade in Japan. -- Tom Havens, Northeastern UniversityKapur fixes a hole in our understanding of what happened in the wake of the 1960 US–Japan Security Treaty crisis by showing how the grand coalitions of the late 1950s were remade into smaller, more stratified social movements. This book will be required reading for anyone seeking to understand the conservative interregnum that demarcated the Security Treaty protests of 1960 and the Vietnam War protests of 1968. -- Christopher Gerteis, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of LondonKapur productively surveys Japan in 1960, showing how the anti–Security Treaty protests catalyzed enormous social ferment. The ‘Anpo’ moment shook Japan’s political and cultural institutions to their foundations but failed to achieve the political transformation so many people deeply desired, creating a sense of unfinished business that continues to this day. -- Laura Hein, Northwestern University

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Book SynopsisAt the end of World War II, the Soviet Union captured 600,000 Japanese prisoners of war and interned them in Siberian labor camps. Sherzod Muminov details the soldiers’ varied experiences of imprisonment, including their indoctrination in Soviet dogma and the shock and alienation of repatriation to a homeland transformed under US occupation.Trade ReviewUncovering and lightening the stories of individual internees is only one part of the history, exploring the reality of why they were buried in the first place is the greater contribution. Muminov here enlightens the personal histories of individuals who existed in some cases for over a decade without a state, against the backdrop of a human-natural geography of labor and transformation in Russia’s Far East. -- Tristan Kenderdine * Global Asia *Thorough and well-researched. -- Martin Laflamme * Japan Times *Indispensable…I would recommend this book not simply to historians of Japan, of the Cold War, or of Russian forced labor but to anyone who is interested in how our past has built our present, from eastern Europe to Japan. -- Katalin Ferber * H-Net Reviews *An excellent account that enables the reader not only to understand the details of the Siberian internment but to reflect on its significance to the Cold War and the development of postwar Japan…Well-researched and articulately written. -- James D. J. Brown * Monumenta Nipponica *The Siberian Internment is one of the forgotten episodes of the Second World War. In this fascinating account, Muminov exploits Japanese memoirs and Russian archives to tell a complex history, attentive both to individual lived experiences and to structural change, including the waning of the Japanese empire and the emergence of the Cold War. A stimulating challenge to the traditional boundaries of Japanese history! -- Sebastian Conrad, author of What Is Global History?This magnificent work is the first transnational and comprehensive treatment of more than 600,000 Japanese POWs captured in Northeast Asia who were transported to forced labor camps in the Soviet Union, where they languished for many years before a fraught repatriation to Japan. Muminov depicts the POWs with sympathy and compassion, yet examines the history with detachment and objectivity. Eleven Winters of Discontent offers impeccable scholarship, forceful argument, and a gripping narrative. -- Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, author of Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of JapanA fresh, new history of the Siberian Internment that goes beyond hackneyed narratives of victimhood. Using a contextually broader and chronologically longer framework, Muminov moves the internment history beyond a national Japanese experience to a larger transnational story shared by various foreign POWs. At the same time, he reminds us how postwar Japan carefully erased the imperial past by remembering a particular set of hardship narratives while averting its eyes from anything that recalled the empire. An outstanding contribution to our reconsideration of the early postwar and Cold War world. -- Masuda Hajimu, author of Cold War Crucible: The Korean Conflict and the Postwar WorldMuminov renders much-needed complexity and diversity to existing nation-centric narratives of the Siberian internment of over 600,000 Japanese. Giving agency to both Russians and Japanese on the ground, he offers transnational perspectives long called for but rarely achieved. This is a nuanced yet comprehensive treatment of the internment and its sociopolitical life in postwar Japan as well as a riveting read for anyone interested in the global history of war and the making of a postwar nation state. -- Sho Konishi, author of Anarchist Modernity: Cooperatism and Japanese–Russian Intellectual Relations in Modern JapanAn extraordinary achievement that connects the communist world with that of wartime East Asia as well as the Cold War, making contributions to the history of World War II, the Soviet gulags, and the postwar politics of life-writing. Muminov deprovincializes both Japanese and Russian modern history, showing they are incomprehensible without knowing the wartime connections that bound them together. In fields that continue to be dominated by narrow national histories, this kind of multilingual, multi-archival approach is extremely rare, and at the cutting edge of historical research. -- Aaron William Moore, author of Writing War: Soldiers Record the Japanese Empire

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Book SynopsisChina and India have been powerfully shaped by both transnational and subnational forces. Beyond Regimes explores local and global influences as they play out in the contemporary era with a focus on four intersecting topics: labor relations; legal reform and rights protest; public goods provision; and transnational migration and investment.

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Book SynopsisIn the first comprehensive study of Guo Moruo in English, Pu Wang explores the dynamics of translation, revolution, and historical imagination in twentieth-century Chinese culture. Guo was a romantic writer, Mao Zedong’s last poetic interlocutor, a Marxist historian, president of China’s Academy of Sciences, and translator of Goethe’s Faust.Trade ReviewThe Translatability of Revolution brings together Guo Moruo’s poetry, dramas, personal essays, and theoretical and polemical writings to present the most sophisticated and far-ranging study in English of this author and his works. Scholars and students of Chinese literature and history, Japanese studies, comparative literature, and translation will all benefit from Pu Wang’s discussion of Guo’s translingual creation of a new poetic subject and from many other insights found in this study. -- Michael Gibbs Hill, College of William & MaryGuo Moruo is arguably one of the most controversial figures in modern Chinese literary history. Because of his highly contested image, Guo has never been a popular scholarly subject. In this groundbreaking book, Pu Wang seeks to assess Guo’s literary and political career in terms of his engagement as a ‘translator.’ He defines translation as a transcultural practice that involves not only linguistic rendition but also ideological brokering as well as psychological invocation. Above all, he finds in Guo’s case a compelling testimony to the relationships between language and revolution, historical fabulation and political engagement. Wang’s book is a most important source for anyone interested in translation studies, Chinese and comparative literature, and cultural politics. -- David Der-wei Wang, Harvard UniversityA towering figure and the Renaissance Man of Chinese New Culture, Guo Moruo holds the key to a critical and historical decoding of its Zeitgeist and its DNA strains—from lyrical poetry to autobiography, from the modern spoken drama to translation, from literary criticism to archeological philology and Marxist historiography. Pu Wang’s work is an inspiring contribution to the untimely, even heroic, effort at addressing this glaring absence in contemporary scholarship and intellectual discussion. -- Xudong Zhang, New York UniversityAn inspiring book that offers new ideas for readers to chew and digest. -- Q. Edward Wang * Chinese Historical Studies *

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Book SynopsisHow did Hindu reformers make the religion modern? Brian Hatcher argues that this is the wrong question to ask. Exploring two nineteenth-century Hindu movements, the Brahmo Samaj and the Swaminarayan Sampraday, he challenges the notion of religious reform.Trade ReviewRequired reading not only for scholars of Hindu studies and South Asian religions but also for any student or scholar engaged in reflection on the concepts of reform, publics, modernity, and coloniality. The book is also highly recommended for anyone invested in interrogating the persistent colonial legacy of the concepts and categories used in the study of religion…Hatcher shows us a different way of thinking not only about colonial India, but also about what it means to read and understand texts in their respective contexts. -- Bennett Comerford * Reading Religion *In opening up new ways to understand the history of pre-modern and modern India, Hatcher gives scholars in history, religious studies, and theology new material to rethink Hindu-Christian relationships…Delightful reading. -- Edward T. Ulrich * Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies *This ambitious book challenges some of our basic assumptions about the beginnings of modern Hinduism and our understandings of its present. Brian Hatcher bravely spans the Indian subcontinent, from Arabian Sea to Bay of Bengal, to compare two foundational religious movements of the early nineteenth century. Working outside the usual framework of ‘reform,’ Hatcher explores the fundamental problems and possibilities of religion in early colonial modernity. -- Richard H. Davis, author of The Bhagavad Gita: A BiographyBrian Hatcher makes us radically rethink the master tropes of the study of religion. The alternatives he proposes and his delineation of the ‘Empire of Reform’ are of immense value to any project that has not already escaped the strictures imposed by the discourses of coloniality, modernity, and globalization. -- Leela Prasad, author of Poetics of Conduct: Oral Narrative and Moral Being in a South Indian TownIn Hinduism Before Reform, Hatcher engages with two important early colonial religious movements in India to argue that what we think of as ‘Hinduism’ is intricately involved in an ‘empire of reform’ bequeathed to us by the British Raj, the Enlightenment, Protestant missionaries, and Indian reformers. The result is at once radically plural, culturally provocative, and intellectually persuasive. Readers are in very good and very sure hands on every page of this sophisticated mind-bender. -- Jeffrey J. Kripal, author of The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of KnowledgeIn this major contribution to the discourse on religion and reform, Brian Hatcher spotlights two contemporaneous religious innovators in early colonial India: Rammohun Roy and Swaminarayan. The result is a splendid, nuanced reassessment of what we now call ‘modern Hinduism.’ -- Paul B. Courtright, author of Gaṇeśa: Lord of Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings

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Book SynopsisBringing together the series of Brown and Haley lectures delivered in 1975 at the University of Puget Sound, this book is designed for anyone interested in the changing ideas the Japanese have had of themselves, the US and the Western world since the 1700s.Trade Review"Hierarchy in Japan and its connection with Japanese images of the world have been written about many times before, but Jansen's judgment, his warm and conversational tone, and his artful skill at connecting individuals with historical trends render the story all the more intriguing... A nice synthesis and a sensible introduction to the subject of how the Japanese have sought to order the outside world in a way to find their place within it."--Michael W. Donnelly, Pacific Affairs "Jansen, one of the most prolific and stimulating western historians of Japan, has produced a remarkable, comprehensive but at the same time amazingly compact study of Japan's changing attitudes to the world."--Jean-Pierre Lehmann, History "No other Western scholar has written so extensively or so mastered the literature on aspects of this subject."--Kenneth B. Pyle, Journal of Asian StudiesTable of ContentsForewordList of IllustrationsPreface to the 1995 Paperback EditionIntroduction3IChallenges to the Confucian Order in the 1770's7IIWisdom Sought Throughout the World41IIIJapan's Search for Role in the Twentieth Century75Bibliographical Note117Index125

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