Summer Reading Note: Ninja
I’ve finished Stephen Turnbull’s Ninja: the True Story of Japan’s Secret Warrior Cult, and I have good news for current and prospective gradua...
Author: Jonathan Dresner
Summer Reading Notes: Turnbull
After our discussion of the 1590s wars, I did pick up Stephen Turnbull’s Samurai Invasion: Japan’s Korean War, 1592-1598. The book is a great read, ...
Dewey In Japan
Naoko Saito takes John Dewey’s visits to Japan as a starting place for questions about “Education for Global Understanding” [registration requ...
1590s Military Technology Gaps
I recently ran across two separate references to the Hideyoshi invasions of Korea, both of which credited Hideyoshi’s initial success to firearms. That di...
ASPAC Notes: Demographics and States
Historian of Empires Niall Ferguson [via Ralph Luker] recently wrote: Since 1989, the Russian mortality rate has risen from below 11 per 1,000 to more than 15 p...
One-Child Policy as History
I just finished teaching 20th century China, and the three biggest issues in the last section of the course were clearly economic growth, political liberalizati...
Information v. Imperium
This week’s Japan Focus brings discussion of the past, present and future of the Japanese imperial institution. I’m particularly intrigued by the st...
Updates: Textbook and Constitutional revision
The Tri-national textbook I wrote about here has been published. The South Koreans, at least, are taking it pretty seriously [via Ralph Luker], with national di...
ASPAC 2005 Program on-line
The program for the ASPAC 2005 meeting is on-line. In spite of my involvement, it should be a lot of fun! Among other things, I’ll be talking about Japane...
China-Japan/Drama/English/General/International Affairs/Japan/Korea-Japan/Memory/Nationalism/Political/昭和
It’s final’s week: Discuss
Via HNN’s Breaking News, a New York Times quickie: JAPAN: HOLIDAY FOR HIROHITO Japanese lawmakers overwhelmingly voted to honor Emperor Hirohito by renami...
History Carnival #6
History Carnival #6 is up. Most of the Japan-related material will be familiar to readers here, but there’s lots more good stuff there. Go check it out!