history and memory… Reading the Absences in Ramseyer’s “Comfort Women” Provocation 19 Feb 202120 Feb 2021 A new publication on Japan’s wartime system of military prostitution (‘Contracting for sex in the Pacific War,' International Review of Law and Economics [December 2020]) has generated a whirlwind of…
Art… Cruel Resurrection: Chinese Comics and the Korean War 19 Mar 201819 Mar 2018 I wrote this article in the early 2000s under the direction of the ageless Chinese art historian Shen Kuiyi, with whom I did a "cognate field" during my doctoral studies…
China… Wartime History and Beijing’s Response to the New Defence Minister in Tokyo 5 Aug 20165 Aug 2016 In the wake of the Upper House elections in Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has completed a reshuffling of his cabinet. As described by Japan hand Michael Cucek, it was…
history and memory… Last Call for Abe Shinzo Congressional Speech Op-eds 17 May 2015 The Stimson Center's Yuki Tatsumi threw down the gauntlet in The Diplomat on May 7 in a piece pointedly entitled 'Stop Obsessing over Abe's Congressional Speech.' The conclusion read as follows: Continuing…
China… Chinese Journalists and the U.S. Occupation of Japan 5 Apr 20156 Apr 2015 At the conclusion of eight years of Japanese occupation of nearly every major city in the Republic of China, Chinese journalists were prepared not just to celebrate victory but to…
history and memory… Lisa Yoneyama in Toronto; Readings on the ‘Comfort Women’ System 7 Mar 20157 Mar 2015 Yesterday I had a chance to meet briefly in Toronto with Lisa Yoneyama, who is one of the most prevalent scholars working today on issues of transnational war memory politics…
Japan… On Heartbreak, and Bix on Hirohito 30 Sep 201430 Sep 2014 In our culture of oversharing and social media, there is such an excess of verbiage that the words 'must read' or 'essential' have basically lost their meaning. The same is…
East Asian modernity… Pan-Asianism and the Japanese Wartime Empire 9 Jun 201412 Mar 2016 This past spring, upon the invitation of Peter Anderson, I gave a lecture to all of the first-year History students at Leeds University on the following topic, as part of…
American Foreign Policy… Yuanhai Fangwei [远海防卫]: Observing China’s Navy 25 Aug 2011 Back in the American defense belt of Orange County, I'm reading Kissinger and reflecting on the extensive annual report to Congress from the Pentagon regarding Chinese military capabilities. The full…
history and memory… “…and each of these, you could pursue very far…” // Open-Source Teaching 23 May 2011 Today, I am inaugurating a multi-year project whereby a great deal more of my pedagogical artifacts -- my teaching materials -- go online. For instance, I begin one course on…
