New Offerings from Hawai’i
I’ve been absent from Frog in a Well for some time for reasons I explain here, so feel a bit rusty at this. But I was inspired by my receipt of the new Un...
Author: Morgan Pitelka
Recipe for a New Japan? A Dash of Venus
The recent victory of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in the Lower House, just two years after its surprise victory in the Upper House, is only slightly les...
Samurai Exhibit Pwned
The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco has been targeted by an anonymous artistic and political intervention that parodies the current Lords of the Samurai exhib...
The (Ongoing) Economic Crisis
One of my students is doing a summer research project on the Japanese financial crisis of the 1990s and we just looked at Jon Woronoff’s book The Japanese...
Association for Asian Studies Publications
I just received Tools of Culture: Japan’s Cultural, Intellectual, Medical, and Technological Contacts in East Asia, 1000s-1500s, part of the Asia Past and...
Film Festival
Just received this from friends at the Japanese American National Museum: The Japanese American National Museum is accepting film & video submissions for th...
Say hello to your new robot overlords!
A recent article in the Japan Times, pointed out to me by a resourceful student (thanks Lindsay!), shows that the future imagined in Ghost in the Shell and othe...
Samurai-related events, Bowers Museum
The Bowers Museum in southern California opens a new exhibition this Sunday, “Art of the Samurai: Selections from the Tokyo National Museum.” In con...
Noteworthy Archaeological Sites, Issue 2008
Walter Edwards of Tenri University reported in a message to H-Japan that the newest issue of “Noteworthy Archaeological Sites” is online. The report...
New Media and Japanese Studies
WARNING: those of you interested in Japanese studies but not in internet technologies, new media, and the whole question of how digital learning does or doesn&#...
The Soul of Japan
I’m teaching a survey course on premodern Japanese history this semester. It focuses on medieval and early modern Japan, and I wanted the first paper to d...
Any reaction? Land of the Sinking Sun
Guardian reporter Justin McCurry weighs in with an interesting commentary on Japan’s role in the financial turmoil currently roiling across the globe.
The Crazy Guy for Prime Minister, Please
OK, admittedly I am supremely unqualified to write a post about the current prime ministerial vacancy in Japan. I’m a historian who works on the 16th cent...
Otakon: Desperately Seeking Academics
I hear through the grapevine that the organizers of Otakon, the huge anime/manga/pop culture convention held every in August in Baltimore, are looking for acade...