Out today!

A new review essay of unique ambition analyzes my book along with 23(!) others for insights into the nature of late Qing enviro-governance, foregrounding "adaptive resilience" rather than decline. Glad my efforts with Qing docs added to the conversation!

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

I created a deep linked and searchable table of contents index for issues of the prewar "Japan Magazine" found on Internet Archive, with over 200 issues and several thousand articles. Useful for history students working only with English sources:

froginawell.net/indexes/japa...

#japan

I'm practicing explaining my book so I don't freeze up when people ask me what it's about

Newest review of my book and first in a sinological journal. Many thanks to Ruochen Chen at WashU for the kind review. Chen presses me for a little more on Chinese politics of the Yalu border, but also ends review with this lovely bit of writing:

brill.com/view/journal...

So excited to get a copy of @sayakachatani.bsky.social (with Kumhee Cho)'s new book. In sheer awe of the amazing research, incl. more than 200 interviews with members of the Zainichi/Chongryon community. I'll be moderating a book talk in June, so please join! mjha.org/event-6602790

While I was unable to attend the BHC meeting this year, I am honored that my book, "Making Mao’s Steelworks, was selected as a finalist for the Hagley Prize in Business History. I am very grateful to the prize committee, and congratulations to the recipient and fellow finalists.

My review of the volume _Oceanic Japan_ for the journal _Animal History_ is now online. Once a fish guy, always a fish guy. 🐟 🐠 🎣 🐡
online.ucpress.edu/ah/article/d...

This is amazing!! 😍

Discount code for newly released and highly anticipated East Asian #envhist books, @mmuscolino.bsky.social‘s ”Remaking the Earth, Exhausting the People” AND “Revolutionary Natures”as well as @connieychiang.bsky.social’s “Nature Unfurled”

So excited for @mengxiseeley.bsky.social's Austen retelling set in Ming-dynasty China!

I'm flattered! And happy to hear you haven't given up on assigning scholarly articles in your lecture courses, cuz I mostly have...

Updating my Two Koreas course syllabus for next quarter, and would LOVE recommendations on people's favorite teaching materials (films, primary docs, essays, visuals) on modern Korean history.

If you could assign just 1 thing to undergrads coming to K history for first time, what would it be?

I love teaching with the film "Ode to my Father." This Korean Forest Gump is sappy, sentimental, and a bit rosy-eyed in its depiction of South Korean development, but that also makes it great for unpacking and discussion.

Check out W. Puck Brecher's review of Jonas Rüegg's "The Kuroshio Frontier: Empire and Environment in the Making of Japan's Pacific," published in 2026 by @universitypress.cambridge.org; review now available @hnetreviews.bsky.social #envhist #envhum #japan
www.h-net.org/reviews/show...

Flights were horribly delayed and I barely got into Vancouver after midnight, but I'm here at #aas2026 ! Yay! Even brought an old AAS tote bag since there's not a new one this year (someone remind me what year was green?)

My first client I signed on the first month of this year is having her first cover reveal! I'm so excited!!!
@mengxiseeley.bsky.social #writingcommunity #coverreveal #historicalromance #silkandsensibility #janeaustinretelling

Gearing up for #AAS2026! I'll be on two panels this year--one as discussant and the other as presenter. Excited to reconnect with friends and colleagues and learn more about the field in a whirlwind of nerdy revelry.

“A.I. chatbots contain the sum of all human knowledge” is so egregiously wrong that I don’t know what to say.
Chatbots have been trained on corpus of digital(ised) text - ABSOLUTELY NOT the sum of all human knowledge. Paper, experience, embodiment, oral tales all missing.
These people are fools!

This to me is the most interesting—that research on Uyghurs is now considered DEI (but not another oppressed group, Mongols in China). Learned Islamophobia or just nonsensical maybe?

More rich fruits of the imperial turn in Japanese Studies! One of the panels I'm most looking forward to at #AAS2026.

Hear about the newest books on #JapaneseEmpire at #AAS2026 on March 14, 5:45-7:15pm, with Kristin Roebuck, @hannahjshepherd.bsky.social, Holly Stephens, and me, Laura Hein as mod

@asianstudies.org @columbiaup.bsky.social @ucpress.bsky.social @uchicagopress.bsky.social @yalepress.bsky.social

When DOGE Unleashed ChatGPT on the Humanities

🧵1/x Lots of blunt and contradictory conclusions by (de)generative AI on extent of #DEI in #AsianStudies projects that had received funding from #NEH

Coming June 2026: www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501...

I got a discount code for sales of my book in March!

Territorial Natures A critical account of the Japanese occupation in Inner Mongolia.   Early in the twentieth century, the steppe borderlands between China and Mongolia erupted in violence. As imperial Japan expanded int...

2/ My first book, “Territorial Natures: Imperial Japan and the Mongolian Question,” is coming out with @uchicagopress.bsky.social this August 2026.

You can find it here: press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

I'm a bit late to this announcement but wanted to share that the newest issue of the JJS is now out! Very proud of the essays and book reviews inside. My coeditor Sabine Frühstück, the book review editor Jessamyn Abel, and our managing editors David and now Athena all did incredible work.

By happy coincidence, the latest issue of the Journal of Japanese Studies features my review of Stefan Huebner et al's great new edited volume, Oceanic Japan, and Huebner's review of my own book Border of Water and Ice. Check out JJS to see our evaluations of each other's work!

Territorial Natures: Imperial Japan and the Mongolian Question
Sakura Christmas｜The University of Chicago Press
press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

Yay!!!