In 1844, a young Japanese artist named Sakurada Kyūnosuke (1823-1914) happened upon a daguerreotype, an early form of photography that had been invented in France five years earlier. Sakurada, who generally went by the name of Renjō, was at the time an apprentice in the studio of a painter of the Kanō school, a loosely organized group whose members had served for more than two centuries as the official artists of the Tokugawa regime. Renjō was astonished by the verisimilitude of the image he saw, but what shocked him was how it had been made: not with dyes and ink, but with a machine and chemi ..read more

Ludwig II was born in 1845. He became King of Bavaria in 1864, when he was only 18 years old. Within Bavaria, he is sometimes called the Swan King or even the Fairy Tale King. Outside of Germany, he is sometimes called Mad King Ludwig. Over the course of his 22-year reign, he gradually lost interest in affairs of state. Instead, he became interested in the arts—especially architecture and the work of Richard Wagner, who lived from 1813-1883. Although he used his own money to fund his artistic extravagances, his tendency to ignore all of his counselors’ advice did not make him popular at court ..read more

In April 1942, at least half a million people fled the city of Madras, now known as Chennai. The reason? The British, after weeks of growing unease about the possibility of a Japanese invasion, finally recommended that people leave the city. In the tense, uncertain atmosphere of 1942, many people took that advice to heart—and fled.     The Great Flap of 1942: How the Raj Panicked over a Japanese Non-invasion”, Mukund Padmanabhan (Vintage India, February 2024) The Japanese, of course, did not invade in 1942. But between the attack on Pearl Harbor and, say, mid-1942 when the Allies he ..read more

A picture, it is said, is worth a thousand words. A Danger Shared is a collection of photographs taken by Melville Jacoby, an American exchange student and later war correspondent in China, Southeast Asia, and the Philippines (for Henry Luce’s Time and Life magazines) in the mid-to-late 1930s and early 1940s. Author Bill Lascher’s text accompanying the photographs tells Jacoby’s story against the background of the gathering storm, and later when the storm breaks over the Asia-Pacific.   The Second World War in Asia is often told from the American, British, and Japanese perspectives ..read more

The food of Taiwan has been the subject of a number of recent books, such as Frankie Gaw’s First Generation and Clarissa Wei’s Made in Taiwan. Chop Fry Watch Learn by Michelle King joins them, although it is a scholarly work, rather than providing recipes. While the first  two do also include cultural, historical, and personal background, Michelle King’s work delves deeper as it follows the journey of Fu Pei-Mei, one of the first TV presenters on food and author of bilingual Chinese cookbooks. Chop Fry Watch Learn: Fu Pei-mei and the Making of Modern Chinese Food, Michelle T King (WW Nort ..read more

Adivasi Art And Activism: Curation in a Nationalist Age, Alice Tilche (Permanent Black, April 2024) As India consolidates an aggressive model of economic development, indigenous tribal people—the Adivasis—continue to be overrepresented among the country’s poor. Adivasis make up more than eight hundred communities in India, with a total population of more than a hundred million people speaking more than three hundred different languages. Although their historical presence is acknowledged by the state and they are lauded as part of India’s ethnic identity, their poverty has been compounded by th ..read more

Born of a Swiss mother and an Indian father and raised in England, Meira Chand’s novels have been set in Japan, Singapore, and India, and a couple have been adapted for the stage in London and Singapore. It wasn’t until she was an adult that she lived in India. Her recent book, The Pink, White and Blue Universe, is a new collection of thirteen stories set in India, many of which tackle the issues of belonging. The first story, “High Ideals”, reads like Somerset Maugham’s The Painted Veil. A newly-arrived British woman named Louise feels out of place in her new home of Mumbai when her husband W ..read more

Publisher Oxford University Press hails Activism and Post-activism as the first-ever English language work on the birth and development of South Korean nonfiction film. Drawing on more than 200 films and videos, Jihoon Kim’s trailblazing book charts the history of documentary filmmaking in the South from its early “activism” period in the 1980s to what the author calls its modern “post-activism” period in the late ’90s and 2000s. In doing so, Kim highlights the work of marginalized groups—including women, sexual minorities, and the working class—who, without the ease of access modern technolog ..read more

Seicho Matsumoto was one of Japan’s most celebrated mystery writers —with two dozen novels to his name from the late 1950s, at a time when Japan was rebuilding after the war until just before his death in 1992—but only in recent years his work has been translated into English. Point Zero, translated by Louise Heal Kawai, is one of his early novels. The story, set in 1958 and the first part of 1959, takes place mainly in Tokyo and the western port city of Kanazawa and is defined by both the hope of the new era and the agonies of war.   Unlike most noir stories of that time, Point Zero ..read more

Deng Xiaoping’s 1992 Southern Tour has become a milestone in Chinese economic history. Historians and commentators credit Deng’s visit to Guangzhou Province for reinvigorating China’s market reforms in the years following 1989—leading to the Chinese economic powerhouse we see today. Journalist Jonathan Chatwin follows Deng’s journey in The Southern Tour: Deng Xiaoping and the Fight for China’s Future.     Southern Tour, The: Deng Xiaoping and the Fight for China’s Future, Jonathan Chatwin (Bloombusry Academic, May 2024) Chatwin follows Deng—from its start in Wuhan, through the Speci ..read more