New Books in Japanese Studies

The twelfth century was a pivotal time in Japan’s history. It witnessed intense factionalism at the imperial court in Kyoto, Japan’s first national civil war, and above all the rise of warriors to national prominence, culminating with the establishment of Japan’s first warrior government, the Kamakura Shogunate. This dramatic power shift has understandably dominated historical debates. However, focusing almost exclusively on military and political narratives led scholarship to overlook the extraordinary economic transformation that unfolded in parallel.

Beginning in the mid-twelfth century, Japan transformed from a rice economy to one based on cash coins imported from China. For the next three centuries, transactions, tax collections, and even fines were expressed in terms of copper coins, which in turn spurred the emergence of trade cities, new classes of merchants and artisans, and the establishment of guilds. And yet not a single coin was issued in Japan. This “minting-less” monetization seemingly stood in sharp contrast to developments in medieval Europe, where monetization went hand in hand with rulers who struck their own coins.

In The Disease of Money: Japan’s Monetization in the Early Middle Ages (U Hawai’i Press, 2026), Dr. Mikael Adolphson offers an analysis of this initial import of Chinese coins and its subsequent monetization through three lenses. First, he provides a contextual and macroeconomic explanation by looking at the context of East Asian trade, where the political and economic developments in Song China also played an especially vital role. Second, the matter of agency behind the import of and demand for coins is dealt with in depth, revealing that several groups played key roles, but above all that Chinese merchants were the most influential agents. Finally, in an effort to put Japan’s medieval monetization into a disciplinary perspective, a comparison is made with Scandinavia around the same time. It shows that while Japan took a different route to its monetization, there were also comparable situations in Europe.

By moving beyond the warrior-centric view, The Disease of Money uncovers a richer, more complex portrait of medieval Japan—one of innovation, adaptation, and global economic connectivity.
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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In this episode, James Farrer of Gastronomica’s Editorial Collective and Alejandra Dorado-Vinay talk about their introduction to the new special section on migrant foodways and culinary mobilities in Japan. Taking listeners into the neighborhoods of superdiverse Tokyo through everyday experiences of markets, restaurants, and eating out in the street, they discuss how histories of power shape migrant foodways, and how migrants in Japan shape its local culture. Their conversation connects taste, fashion, and power in Japan’s vibrant migrant food scene, shedding light on the culinary imports of curry and ramen, the experience of Peruvian migration, and a cosmopolitan landscape of Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, Brazilian, and East African and West African restaurants in a place where migrant foodways can often be largely invisible. The two-part special section in the Fall and Winter 2026 issues of Gastronomica brings together 10 articles on the movement of people, food, and ideas across borders with research on eateries, markets, community gardens, social media, school meals, and holiday rituals in Japan.
Listeners can find "Introduction to Migrant Foodways and Culinary Mobilities in Japan" by James Farrer and Alejandra Dorado-Vinay, and their co-written follow-up piece, “Culinary Regimes: The Political Economy of Foreign Food in Tokyo” in Gastronomica (issues 26.3 and 26.4).
James Farrer is a professor of Sociology at Sophia University in Tokyo and a member of the Editorial Collective at Gastronomica. He has published numerous books and articles on urban life, globalization, and cuisine and is currently at work on a comparative study of migrant-run restaurants in Japan and Germany.
Alejandra Dorado-Vinay is completing a PhD in Global Studies at Sophia University in Tokyo, where her work focuses on Mexican and Peruvian food in Japan. Previously, as a student at El Colegio de México, she conducted research on the history of Japanese restaurants in Mexico City. Beyond her academic work, she also has experience in food and beverage consulting in Japan.
Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies is published by the University of California Press. Quarterly issues are available in print and online.
Listeners can now find the Gastronomica podcast on the New Books Network. Subscribe to Gastronomica’s podcast feed to stay updated on the latest episodes.

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Black Market Intimacies: The Transpacific Sexual Economy of the Korean War (Stanford UP, 2026) reveals how illicit exchanges of money and commodities involving sexual encounters between Korean and Japanese women and US soldiers provided the material foundations of the regional economy across Korea and Japan during the Korean War. Against the conventional view that illicit exchanges exist outside the formal economy and legal regulations, Dr. Jeongmin Kim examines how the interlinked markets for transactional sex and goods crucially constituted the transpacific formation of US military base capitalism in post-World War II East Asia. Going beyond what is commonly categorized as prostitution and violence in Cold War archives, Dr. Kim weaves together stories from the myriads of mundane records scattered around multilingual archives to document larger transnational webs of the war economy.
From Korean women who brought camel blankets and whiskey to local markets in Seoul, to middle-aged Okinawan women dealing in US military notes, Dr. Kim uncovers the crucial roles that local women played in circulating war supplies and currency across the region through their sexual and intermediary labor. The result is an intimate and global history of the Korean War that urges us to rethink the often-antithetical relationship between sexual intimacy and market economies in the context of war and occupation.
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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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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