Books on Asia

The 1910 Japan-Britain Exhibition – with Formosa Files In this special crossover episode, John Ross and Eryk Michael Smith from Formosa Files: the History of Taiwan Podcast explore how Japan showcased its “model colony” of Formosa (1895–1945). First up is the 1910 Japan–British Exhibition in London, which featured human exhibits – 24 Indigenous Paiwan people from southern Taiwan. Next, they follow...

Amy reads from The Widow, the Priest, and the Octopus Hunter: Discovering a Lost Way of Life on a Secluded Japanese Island .  Chapter 1: The War Widow   In 1997, Amy moved to a small island of just 950 people in Japan's Seto Inland Sea. She rented an akiya (empty house) from a widow whose soldier-husband had died in WWII. Six years later, when the widow dies, Amy purchases her home and must finall...

John Ross, during his schoolboy days in New Zealand, was interested in far-flung places such as South America, Papua New Guinea, Ancient Greece and Rome, as well as books on World War One and Two. He read a lot of youth fiction starting at 10 years old, but as a teenager, had a voracious appetite for nonfiction. In his 20s he discovered a few wonderful fiction writers, but has still kept mostly to...

Lan Su Garden is a magnificent Ming scholar garden in downtown Portland, Oregon. It opened in 2000, a collaboration between sister cities Portland and Suzhou, hence the name: Lan Su. Photographer and local resident Carol Isaak found refuge there during the Covid pandemic, fell in love with it, and began photographing the oasis through the following seasons and years. The result: her photographic b...

The islands, in order of appearance in the episode, are: Geomun Island (Port Hamilton); the garden island of Oedo (Oe Island – “do” is the Korean word for “island”); Geojedo, site of an important Korean War POW camp and often spelled “Koje”;Ulleungdo and the nearby disputed islets of Dokdo; and the fictional island of Sukhan. Books mentioned in this Episode: A Korean Odyssey: Island Hopping in Cho...

Books discussed in this episode, in order of appearance: The Last Great Australian Adventurer: Ben Carlin's Epic Journey Around the World by Amphibious Jeep (Random House Australia, 2017) by Gordon Bass Once a Fool: From Japan to Alaska by Amphibious Jeep by Boye De Mente Japanese Swords and Armor: Masterpieces from Thirty of Japan's Greatest Samurai Warriors (Tuttle, 2024) by Paul Martin The Mode...

Amy Chavez has a deep discussion with Ted Goossen about Japan, it's emerging culture, it's historically strong women and how Japanese literature and its themes, are changing. In addition to talking about Hiromi Kawakami's novel The Third Love , other mentioned in this podcast episode are feminist Chizuko Ueno, translator John Bester and authors Kanzaburo Oe, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, Masuji Ibuse and M...

Sam Baldwin tells John Ross about some ingredients behind the success of his self-published memoir For Fukui’s Sake: Two Years in Rural Japan (the subject of a previous chat between them on the Bookish Asia podcast ). They touch on Sam’s latest memoir, Dormice & Moonshine: Falling for Slovenia. But the heart of the conversation is some travel book recommendations – and Sam’s new project: a review...

In his novel China Running Dog, a young man in his early twenties lives in Shanghai in the year 2000, in a greed-crazed free-for-all moral and lawless vacuum created by the Chinese Communist Party. Johnny Trent, small-time entrepreneur from Basildon in the UK, ends up in China, where he meets Felix Fawcett-Smith, fresh off the boat and from the other side of the tracks. An unlikely friendship begi...

The Wondrous Elixir of the Two Chinese Lovers – Tim McGirk The novel tells the story of archaeologist Ned Sheehan's discovery of two ancient Chinese tombs at a Maya site in southern Mexico. One tomb belongs to Xu Fu, a famous Taoist priest who vanished on a quest for the elixir of immortality at the behest of China’s First Emperor. The other houses the emperor’s own mother, scandalously revealed t...

Lauren Scharf talks about Japan's minka, kominka and akiya houses in Japan. MinkaCon 2025 , is an event to be held from Nov. 7-9, in Shinshiro, Aichi Prefecture. The two-and-a-half-day event features discussions, presentations, workshops and a writers panel for those interested in life in the Japanese countryside and preserving traditional Japanese houses. There will be a bevy of authors present,...

A Tale of Three Tribes in Dutch Formosa (by Yao-Chang Chen, translated by He Wen-ching) Sitting in for Amy is the duo John Ross & Eryk Michael Smith of Plum Rain Press and the Formosa Files podcast . They discuss their very first book release, a historical novel set in southwestern Taiwan in the mid-1600s. The Dutch East India Company’s presence there (1624-1662) came to an end after a series of b...

Asia Bookroom exhibits their most precious items at rare and antiquarian book fairs in Melbourne, Sydney, and Hong Kong. Look for them at the Sydney Rare Book Fair from Oct. 23-25.   In this podcast we discuss some of the items on offer at the Sydney Rare Book Fair: The Disputed Islands Controversial Japanese Map by Hayashi Shihei from around 1790. This is a manuscript copy (written by hand), and...

Adelstein introduces the people behind Mt. Gox, one of the world's largest Bitcoin exchanges, based in Tokyo and run by Frenchman Mark Karpeles. As a reporter for The Daily Beast , Japan-based Adelstein starts researching Mt. Gox, to figure out how it got hacked, and how it collapsed i 2014 with over 650,000 Bitcoins gone missing. He covers the laws, customs and quirks of Japan's hostage-justice s...

In this episode we cover traditional Japanese gardens and how ancient gardens were related to nature, geomancy, literature and Japanese concepts of wabi-sabi , yugen , and mono no aware . but how garden design shifted from symbolism and representation to a more naturalistic style as seen in Murin-an, a garden in kyoto. Essays on garden design include entries by Ogawa Jihei (1860-1933), Kengo Kuma,...

Books discussed include: Korean Wilds and Villages (1938) by Swedish zoologist Sten Bergman The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why it Matters , by BR Meyers Absurdistan , by (2006) by Gary Shteyngart Cat's Cradle , by Kurt Vonnegut The Cuttlefish (2005) by Chris Tharp The Books on Asia Podcast is co-produced with Plum Rain Press .  Podcast host Amy Chavez is author of The...

Amy Chavez and Hector Garcia discuss his recently released book, The Spirit of Shinto , and how Shinto’s worldview permeates pop culture—anime, manga, films—where good and evil often blur, echoing the idea that kegare (dirt, corruption) must be cleansed rather than destroyed. Unlike Western religions where God is above, Shinto gods exist among people, as seen in Makoto Shinkai’s films or games lik...

Amy Chavez opens the show by asking Friedman to give a tribute to Ozzy Osbourne, who passed away on July 25, 2025. Friedman then turns to the reason for writing his book, co-authored by music journalist John Weiderhorn. Friedman talks about the co-writing process and describes it as “putting his musical abilities into words.” His latest solo release, Drama , he calls his best and most romantic wor...

A few of Takemori's favorite books on Japan are: Hitomachi , a photo book by Araki Noboyoshi Walking The Kiso Road by William Scott Wilson (See our podcast episode with the author) The Catalpa Bow by Carmen Blacker Takemori's upcoming translations are Grave of the Fireflies by Akiyuki Nosaka (Penguin Modern Classics,  Sept. 2025),  Hollow Inside by Asako Otani (2026) and  Family of the Wasteland b...

Lina Terrell is a translator of Japanese historical texts. Today we are going to talk about her recently released translation of The Legacy of the Ryukyu Kingdom: An Okinawan History (JPIC, 2025) by Takara Kurayoshi, a native of Okinawa. Before Okinawa, the unified and independent Ryukyu Kingdom existed for 400 years. What was this island nation like and what kind of world did it exist in? Author...

Igor Prusa , Ph. D. is a Czech scholar in Japanese and media studies, currently affiliated with Ambis University Prague and Metropolitan University Prague. He received PhDs in media studies at Prague’s Charles University and at the University of Tokyo. His research interests include media scandals in Japan and anti-heroism in popular fiction.  Today we're going to talk about his new book, Scandal...

In this episode of the Books on Asia podcast, Amy Chavez talks with Baye McNeil talk about being a black minority in Japan, Japanese views of black people, the "African Samurai," the arrival of Commodore Perry in 1854 (who brought a minstrel show with him who performed " blackface "), and some of the media's portrayals of black people in both the US and Japan. He cites the original Calpis beverage...

Podcast host Amy Chavez talks with Michael Pronko, a Tokyo-based writer of murder, memoir, and music. He is professor of American Literature at Meiji Gakuen University. During his over 20 years in the country, he has written for Newsweek Japan , The Japan Times, and Artscape Japan , and has been featured on NHK TV and Nippon television. He also runs the website Jazz in Japan , which covers the vib...

Paul Martin is a Japanese sword expert who has worked at the British Museum and traveled extensively in Japan to study swords and armor. Martin's new book Japanese Swords and Armor covers 30 famous samurai warriors and their swords, armor, and other artifacts associated with them, from antique sets to modern treasures, each with its own historical and cultural significance. The book was originally...

Burritt Sabin was born in New York City and came to Japan as a naval officer in 1975. His professional career in Japan started as a journalist, and he quickly moved into writing and historical research. The first book we’re going to discuss today is about Yokohama,  one of the first Japanese ports to open to foreign trade in the 1850s. A Historical Guide to Yokohama: Sketches of the Twice-Risen Ph...