Barak Kushner (バラック・クシュナー) (顧若鵬)

The first book in English to unravel the history of ramen, Japan's famous noodle soup.

As part of the SOAS Translation Workshop in Japanese Studies 2012, my team of excellent graduate students and translators put in a fine effort to start translating the 500 page tome. This is a book from a major Japanese newspaper looking out over the last eighty years of Japanese history and analyzing the role media plays in the formation of history. The work includes extensive company archival material and key interviews with journalists involved in critical moments of 20th century Japanese history.

The only English- language book that delves into the intricacies of WWII Japanese propaganda

Chapter on image of Japan in modern Chinese humor.

This research considers some of the ways in which sweets increasingly came to be incorporated into the everyday lives of Japanese people, as an indicator of rising levels of "modernity."

Overview of Japan's efforts to market and promote the 1940 Olympic games in Tokyo that never took place

Chapter in edited volume on Taisho era Japanese cuisine

An analysis of Japanese wartime kamishibai and the market for children's propaganda

My chapter on Godzilla as Japan's first international popular culture icon.

See my essay on Alan Marcuson's fantastic collection of imperial Japanese textiles.

Article on John Provoo, Japan and the Cold War in the US

Article on postwar BC class Japanese war crimes

How history influences politics and culture in Taiwan, Japan and China

Read how America used the Reader's Digest for postwar propaganda in Japan.

Who had fun during World War Two?

See my co-authored, award-winning article on Japanese wartime radio propaganda.

Article about Japanese media "hero" and crime

Download the article from the Cambridge University Research Magazine