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December 16, 2019: “I’m keen to start publishing but it’s still too early to share my research.” Sound familiar?

If so, you might want to consider starting with a book review. Reviews are a great way to experience the publishing process and start building a portfolio of your work.

Reviewing a book that you need to read closely for your research can help with setting targets and encouraging yourself to engage more systematically with the book’s content. On the other hand, choosing a book at the periphery of your research area (or that’s required reading for a class you teach) might be useful for encouraging fresh perspectives.

For inspiration, we’ve put together a list of some recent English-language publications on Japan below, but you’re most welcome to choose books that aren’t in the list if you like. While you’re at it, check out last year’s book list too, as well as the published reviews from NVJS 11.

If anything takes your fancy, check out our Review Guidelines and get in touch!

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NVJS 2019 Japan Book List

(in alphabetical order by author)

Alexy, Allison:
Intimate Disconnections: Divorce and the Romance of Independence in Contemporary Japan (forthcoming 2020, University of Chicago Press)

Alexy, Allison & Emma E. Cook (eds.):
Intimate Japan: Ethnographies of Closeness and Conflict (2018, University of Hawaii Press)

Ambaras, David R.:
Japan’s Imperial Underworlds: Intimate Encounters at the Borders of Empire (2018, Cambridge University Press)

Armstrong, Peter:
Hagi – A Feudal Capital in Tokugawa Japan (2019, Routledge)

Berndt, Jacqueline, Kazumi Nagaike & Fusami Ogi (eds.):
Shōjo Across Media: Exploring “Girl” Practices in Contemporary Japan (2019, Palgrave)

Berry, Mary Elizabeth & Marcia Yonemoto:
What Is a Family? Answers from Early Modern Japan (2019, University of California Press)

Brown, Alexander:
Anti-Nuclear Protest in Post-Fukushima Tokyo (2019, Routledge) –> REVIEW PROPOSAL REECEIVED

Burns, Susan L.:
Kingdom of the Sick: A History of Leprosy and Japan (2019, University of Hawaii Press)

Chao, S., S. Clark, T. Connolly, A. Watson & L. Williams (eds.):
British Romanticism in Asia: The Reception, Translation, and Transformation of Romantic Literature in India and East Asia (2019, Palgrave)

Chapman, David & Carol Hayes (eds.):
Japan in Australia: Culture, Context and Connection (2019, Routledge) –> REVIEWED in #NVJS12

Corbett, Rebecca:
Cultivating Femininity: Women and Tea Culture in Edo and Meiji Japan (2018, University of Hawaii Press)

de Swiedelande, Tanguy Struye, Dorothée Vandamme, David Walton & Thomas Wilkins (eds.):
Rethinking Middle Powers in the Asian Century: New Theories, New Cases (2018, Routledge)

Denison, Rayna (ed.):
Princess Mononoke: Understanding Studio Ghibli’s Monster Princess (2018, Bloomsbury)

Doerr, Neriko Musha & Debra J. Occhi:
The Augmented Reality of Pokémon Go: Chronotopes, Moral Panic, and Other Complexities (2019, Lexington Books)

Farris, William Wayne:
A Bowl for a Coin: A Commodity History of Japanese Tea (2019, University of Hawaii Press)

Hall, Jenny:
Japan Beyond the Kimono (2019, Bloomsbury)

Harutoonian, Harry:
Uneven Moments: Reflections on Japan’s Modern History (2019, Columbia University Press)

Hashimoto, Kayoko (ed.):
Japanese Language and Soft Power in Asia (2018, Palgrave)

Heinrich, Patrick & Christian Galan (eds.):
Being Young in Super-Aging Japan: Formative Events and Cultural Reactions (2018, Routledge)

Hemmann, Kathryn:
Manga Cultures and the Female Gaze (2019, Palgrave)

Hirayama, Yosuke & Misa Izuhara
Housing in Post-Growth Society: Japan on the Edge of Social Transition (2018, Routledge)

Hoover, William D.:
Historical Dictionary of Postwar Japan, Second Edition (2018, Rowman & Littlefield)

Hutchinson, Rachael:
Japanese Culture Through Videogames (2019, Routledge) –> REVIEWED in #NVJS12

Jones, Meghen & Louise Allison Cort (eds.):
Ceramics and Modernity in Japan (2019, Routledge)

Kingston, Jeff:
Japan (2019, Polity Books)

Kwak, Ki-Sung:
Television in Transition in East Asia (2018, Routledge)

Lamarre, Thomas:
The Anime Ecology: A Genealogy of Television, Animation, and Game Media (2018, University of Minnesota Press) –> REVIEWED in #NVJS12 

Lamb, John:
Okinawans Reaching Australia (2019, Hesperian Press) –> REVIEWED in #NVJS 12

Lavery, Grace:
Quaint, Exquisite: Victorian Aesthetics and the Idea of Japan (2019, Princeton University Press)

Maree, Claire:
queerqueen (2020 forthcoming, Oxford University Press)

Maree, Claire & Kaori Okano (eds.):
Discourse, Gender and Shifting Identities in Japan: The Longitudinal Study of Kobe Women’s Ethnographic Interviews 1989-2019, Phase One (2018, Routledge)

McLaughlin, Levi:
Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution: The Rise of a Mimetic Nation in Modern Japan (2018, University of Hawaii Press)

McClelland, Gwyn:
Dangerous Memory in Nagasaki: Prayers, Protests and Catholic Survivor Narratives (2019, Routledge)

Miles, Melissa & Robin Gerster:
Pacific Exposures: Photography and the Australia-Japan Relationship (2018, ANU Press)

Miura, Takashi:
Agents of World Renewal: The Rise of Yonaoshi Gods in Japan (2019, University of Hawaii Press)

Mountfort, Paul, Anne Peirson-Smith & Adam Gezcy (eds.):
Planet Cosplay: Costume Play, Identity and Global Fandom (2018, Intellect Books)

Ogi, F., R. Suter, K. Nagaike & J. Lent (eds.):
Women’s Manga in Asia and Beyond: Uniting Different Cultures and Identities (2019, Palgrave)

O’Neal, Halle:
Word Embodied: The Jeweled Pagoda Mandalas in Japanese Buddhist Art (2018, Harvard University Press)

Posadas, Baryon Tensor:
Double Visions, Double Fictions: The Doppelgà¤nger in Japanese Film and Literature (2018, University of Minnesota Press)

Pritchard, Franz:
Residual Futures: The Urban Ecologies of Literary and Visual Media of 1960s and 1970s Japan (2019, Columbia University Press)

Pyle, Kenneth B.:
Japan in the American Century (2018, Harvard University Press)

Rambelli, Fabio (ed.):
Spirits and Animism in Contemporary Japan: The Invisible Empire (2019, Bloomsbury)

Siniawer, Eiko Maruko:
Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan (2018, Cornell University Press)

Stanley, Amy:
Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Japanese Woman and Her Worlds (2020 forthcoming, Simon & Schuster)

Starling, Jessica:
Guardians of the Buddha’s Home: Domestic Religion in Contemporary Jōdo Shinshō« (2019, University of Hawaii Press)

Thomas, Jolyon:
Faking Liberties: Religious Freedom in American-Occupied Japan (2019, University of Chicago Press) –> REVIEWED in #NVJS12

Tseng, Alice Y.:
Modern Kyoto: Building for Ceremony and Commemoration, 1868—1940 (2018, University of Hawaii Press)

White, Linda:
Gender and the Koseki in Contemporary Japan: Surname, Power and Privilege (2018, Routledge)

Yamada, Marc:
Locating Heisei in Japanese Fiction and Film: The Historical Imagination of the Lost Decades (2019, Routledge)

Yasar, Kerim:
Electrified Voices: How the Telephone, Phonograph, and Radio Shaped Modern Japan, 1868—1945 (2018, University of Columbia Press)

Yoneyama, Shoko:
Animism in Contemporary Japan: Voices from the Anthropocene for Post-Fukushima Japan (2018, Routledge)

 

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Image: Laura Kapfer via Unsplash.

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