New Books in Japanese Studies

In March 1942, Japanese troops landed on Java's north coast and were welcomed by many of the Indonesians they had come to conquer. It’s an indication of just how much the Second World War undermined the foundations of European empire, setting up a postwar order that still governs Asia today.
Hans van de Ven’s new book Blood Dawn: World War II and the Making of Modern Asia (Basic Books, 2026) starts in the 19th century, as European empires spread across Asia—only for Japan’s invasion of China in 1937, followed by its rapid advance south in 1941, to undermine the rationale for Western influence and control in China, Indonesia and India—and then, even after Japan’s defeat, the West was forced to retreat from the region.
Hans van de Ven is a professor of modern Chinese history at Cambridge University and a visiting chair professor in history at Peking University. He is the author or editor of ten previous books on Chinese history and the history of warfare.
You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Blood Dawn. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.
Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

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Mapping Medical Modernity: Urban Space and Public Health in Tokyo, 1868–1920 (U Pittsburgh Press, 2026) by Professor Susan L. Burns explores the history of medical modernization and public health in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Tokyo, a city undergoing rapid transformation from the seat of power of the Tokugawa shoguns of the Edo period to the capital of a modern nation-state and its expanding empire in the Meiji period.
Tracing the development of institutions and policies designed to improve medical care and public health in a dense urban environment, Professor Burns examines tensions between the involved parties—including doctors and policymakers, police and civil officials, residents and those who governed them—and provides case studies focused on three of the city’s major challenges in public health: syphilis, cholera, and mental illness. Drawing upon a wide range of archival materials and contemporary accounts, Dr. Burns also employs geographic information system analysis in mapping the complicated relationships interlinking aspects of the urban environment, social life, public policy, and commercialized medical culture to demonstrate visually how policy decisions and medical capitalism gradually reshaped existing spatial arrangements in the city as well as the social relations that unfolded within them.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Pink Auteur, Red Outlaw: Adachi Masao and Japan’s Cinema of Revolution (Awai Books, 2026) is the first-ever English-language book on Adachi Masao. Based on extensive interviews with the director and years of research, this study offers a comprehensive portrait of the filmmaker and his provocative oeuvre – from socially engaged pink films and New Wave cinema to experimental documentary and avant-garde psychodrama. An essential read for those interested in cinema, history, or politics.
Author William Andrews is a Tokyo-based writer and translator originally from Britain. He is the author of The Japanese Red Army: A Short History and Dissenting Japan: A History of Japanese Radicalism and Counterculture, from 1945 to Fukushima. His translations in the visual and performing arts have been widely published.

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The 2011 Fukushima Dai’ichi nuclear disaster was the worst industrial nuclear catastrophe to hit Japan. It was a major event, rated at the highest severity, which released radioactive elements into the power plant’s surrounding environment when back-up systems failed and could not sufficiently cool the nuclear reactors. At least 164,000 people were permanently or temporarily displaced.
Radioactive Governance: The Politics of Revitalization in Post-Fukushima Japan (NYU Press, 2026) offers an ethnographic look at how the disaster was handled by Japan. Unlike prior nuclear-related narratives, such as those surrounding Chernobyl or Hiroshima, which focused on themes of harm, trauma, and victimization, the Japanese government consistently put forward a discourse of minimal or no radiation-related dangers, a gradual bringing home of former evacuees, a restarting of nuclear power plants, and the promotion of a resilient mindset in the face of adversity. This narrative worked to counter other understandings of recovery, such as those of worried citizens unsuccessfully fighting for permanent evacuation because they were afraid to go back to their homes.
Providing a rich theorization of how both governments and citizens shape narratives about catastrophic events, Radioactive Governance not only displays how Fukushima became a story of hope and resilience rather than of victimization, but also how radioactive governance shifted from the nuclear secrecy that characterized the Cold War era to relying on international organizations and domestic citizens to co-manage the aftermath of disasters.

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Why was the Japanese Army so brutal before and during World War Two? This haunting question anchors a sweeping investigation into the moral universe of Imperial Japan’s soldiers, tracing their path from the twilight of the samurai age to the ashes of Manila in 1945.
Punishment: Behind Japanese Military Brutality (Hurst, 2026) by Professor Danny Orbach uncovers a world in which war was conceived not merely as combat, but also as justice. Officers and soldiers learned to navigate two rival visions of war: one restrained by the ‘foreign gaze’ of the Western world, the other rooted in older traditions that cast adversaries as ‘rebels’ and ‘bandits’ deserving exemplary punishment. However, these competing strategies were intertwined, in an interplay of mutual mitigation and brutalisation. Drawing on archival material in six languages and fieldwork conducted across Asia—from Taiwan’s indigenous highlands to Manchuria’s sorghum fields and the streets of Nanjing—Professor Orbach reveals how ambiguity, obedience, fear and ideology converged on the battlefield. Vague orders could become massacres, and the boundary between necessity and cruelty became perilously thin.
Part detective story, part moral history, Punishment illuminates how a modern state slid into devastating violence—and why that descent was neither inevitable nor easily explained.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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