The Japan Society Review

Welcome to a new issue of The Japan Society Review. We present here a small selection of thoughtful reviews and reading suggestions to accompany readers into the autumn season.

Politics, History and International Relations are front and centre in this June issue of The Japan Society Review which includes reviews of three recently published volumes on these topics.

This issue of The Japan Society Review hopes to bring some of that beauty also into your homes featuring the review and some astonishing images of the exhibition Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk opened at the Victorian & Albert Museum in London last February.

Welcome to the first issue of The Japan Society Review in 2020. We start our 15th year of publication with renewed energy and commitment to advance the knowledge and understanding of Japan. In this period of crisis and uncertainty, we invite you to discover new aspects of Japanese culture from the safety of your home.

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.

This issue of The Japan Society Review opens with a review of the catalogue of an exhibition held at the Metropolitan Museum in New York in recognition of the one thousandth anniversary of the publication of The Tale of Genji. Both the catalogue and the exhibition illuminates the importance of Genji in Japanese visual culture.

Welcome to the first issue of The Japan Society Review in 2019. Thanks to our team of dedicated reviewers, we again hope to bring you details of the latest and most interesting publications, films and events related to Japan. As in previous issues, we will maintain a balance between academic, non-fiction publications and works of popular culture.