The Japan Society Review

By Yutaka Kawashima In Japanese Foreign Policy at the Crossroads, Yutaka Kawashima clarifies some of the defining parameters of Japan's past foreign policy and examines the challenges it currently faces, including the quagmire on the Korean Peninsula, the future of the U.S.-Japan alliance, the management of Japan-China relations, and Japan's relation with Southeast Asia Review by Mikihiro Maeda

By Roger Goodman In Japan today, over 30,000 children are in the care of the state. Drawing on his long-term fieldwork in an institution for such children, Roger Goodman describes what happens to them in a country with no professional social workers and little tradition of adopting or fostering children in need of care. Review by Sean Curtin

Edited by Craig Freedman Nowadays everyone is asking if Japan can change. This conference volume explores some answer to this question by featuring internationally renowned scholars and Japan specialists with diverse opinions. Review by Takahiro Miyao

By John Swenson Wright This carefully researched and scholarly study sheds new light on one of the most important themes in modern Japanese history, the US-Japan Alliance after WWII. Review by Sir Hugh Cortazzi

Edited by John Carpenter This profusely illustrated volume presents a wide range of current scholarship on the Edo artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) and his immediate artistic and literary circles. Review by Sir Hugh Cortazzi

By Tadayoshi Sakurai A fascinating glimpse into prevailing nationalistic and militaristic attitudes in early-twentieth-century Japan, Human Bullets is also an engaging story of combat and an excellent source of insights about an influential conflict. Review by D. Colin Jaundrill

The last issue of The Japan Society Review in 2019 includes reviews of five books which, in one way or another, explore the interactions and encounters of Japan and Japanese culture with the rest of the world. In Quaint, Exquisite: Victorian Aesthetics and the Idea of Japan Grace E. Lavery explores how Japan captured the Victorian imagination [...]

For the October issue of The Japan Society Review we have selected a mixture of books that illuminate different aspects of modern Japan. The opening review focuses on the catalogue of the exhibition Conflicts of Interest: Art and War in Modern Japan held at the Saint Louis Art Museum, October 2016 to January 2017.

On 1 May 2019, Prince Naruhito ascended the throne as the 126th Emperor of Japan beginning the Reiwa era. The first Japanese emperor who studied outside Japan, he attended University of Oxford between 1983 and 1985 (his memoirs of those years were translated into English by Sir Hugh Cortazzi as The Thames and I (reprinted 2019)).

Our June issue covers the impressive Citi exhibition Manga マンガ at the British Museum, along with The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories, two novels by Japanese women writers Kanai Mieko and Nakajima Kyoko and finally, the academic study Electrified Voices: How the Telephone, Phonograph, and Radio Shaped Modern Japan, 1868-1945.