Mistero Buffo is Dario Fo’s one-man tour de force, in which he creates his own subversive version of Biblical stories. Infused with the rhythmic drive of a jazz improvisation, the immediacy of a newsp
In early twentieth-century China, Chen Diexian (1879-1940) was a maverick entrepreneur-at once a prolific man of letters and captain of industry, a magazine editor and cosmetics magnate. He tinkered w
While the eradication of smallpox has long been documented, not many know the Chinese roots of this historic achievement. In this revelatory study, Mary Augusta Brazelton examines the PRC's public hea
When modern primary schools were first founded in Japan and Egypt in the 1870s, they did not teach art. By the middle of the twentieth century, art education was a permanent part of Japanese and Egypt
Sovereignty Experiments tells the story of how authorities in Korea, Russia, China, and Japan—through diplomatic negotiations, border regulations, legal categorization of subjects and aliens, and cult
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 il
Claire Edington's fascinating look at psychiatric care in French colonial Vietnam challenges our notion of the colonial asylum as a closed setting, run by experts with unchallenged authority, from whi
By the end of World War II, hundreds of thousands of young men in the Japanese colonies, in particular Taiwan and Korea, had expressed their loyalty to the empire by volunteering to join the army. Why
Today, China is widely known as North Korea’s only ally on the world stage, a relationship that goes back decades as both countries forged a path as communist governments in the post-World War II peri
In 1995, the People’s Republic of China resurrected a Qing-era law mandating that the reincarnations of prominent Tibetan Buddhist monks be identified by drawing lots from a golden urn. The Chinese Co
How can literary forms fashion a nation? Though genres such as the novel and newspaper have been credited with shaping a national imagination and a sense of community, during the rapid modernization o
Smuggling along the Chinese coast has been a thorn in the side of many regimes. From opium concealed aboard foreign steamships in the Qing dynasty to consumer commodities like nylon stockings and wris
In a deeply ethnographic appraisal, based on years of in situ research, The Battle for Fortune looks at the rising stakes of Tibetans’ encounters with Chinese state-led development projects in the ear
In eighteenth-century China, a remarkable intellectual transformation took place, centered on the ascendance of philology. Its practitioners were preoccupied with the reliability of sources as evidenc
In Resurrecting Nagasaki, Chad R. Diehl examines the reconstruction of Nagasaki City after the atomic bombing of August 9, 1945. Diehl illuminates the genesis of narratives surrounding the bombing by
In Promiscuous Media, Hikari Hori makes a compelling case that the visual culture of Showa-era Japan articulated urgent issues of modernity rather than serving as a simple expression of nationalism. H
What is time made of? We might balk at such a question, and reply that time is not made of anything—it is an abstract and universal phenomenon. In Making Time, Yulia Frumer upends this assumptio
Around the turn of the twentieth century, disorders that Chinese physicians had been writing about for over a millennium acquired new identities in Western medicine—sudden turmoil became cholera; flow
This in-depth exploration of culture, media, and protest follows South Korea’s transition from the Korean War to the start of the political struggles and socioeconomic transformations of the Park Chun
How do contemporary generations come to terms with losses inflicted by imperialism, colonialism, and war that took place decades ago? How do descendants of perpetrators and victims establish new relat
Soon after the end of World War II, a majority of the nearly seven million Japanese civilians and serviceman posted overseas returned home. Heeding the call to rebuild, these soldiers helped remake Ja
In Samurai to Soldier, D. Colin Jaundrill traces the radical changes to Japanese military institutions, as well as the consequences of military reforms in his accounts of the Boshin War (1868–1869) an
After the devastation of World War II, journalists, scholars, and citizens came together to foster a new culture of democracy in Japan. Adam Bronson explores this effort in a path-breaking study of th
Government wrongdoing or negligence harms people worldwide, but not all victims are equally effective at obtaining redress. In Accidental Activists, Celeste L. Arrington examines the interactive dynam
