Barak Kushner

Selected Works

Academic journal article
"Pawns of Empire: Postwar Taiwan, Japan and the Dilemma of War Crimes”
Article on postwar BC class Japanese war crimes
online article
Some new thoughts about humor and the state of affairs in Sino-Japan relations
Online article about the history of ramen and the politics of food in Japan and China.
Brief Article
"'Noodle-ology': the politics of cuisine"
Download the article from the Cambridge University Research Magazine
Academic Journal Article
"Nationality and Nostalgia: The Manipulation of Memory in Japan, Taiwan, and China since 1990"
How history influences politics and culture in Taiwan, Japan and China
Co-authored with Sato Masaharu, “Digesting Postwar Japanese Media: American Propaganda in Occupied Japan,” Diplomatic History, January 2005, p. 27-48.
Read how America used the Reader's Digest for postwar propaganda in Japan.
“Laughter as Materiel: The Mobilization of Comedy in Japan’s Fifteen-Year War,” volume xxvi, 2 (June 2004), The International History Review, p. 300-330.
Who had fun during World War Two?
"'Negro Propaganda Operations': Japan's short-wave radio information broadcasts for World War II Black Americans"
See my co-authored, award-winning article on Japanese wartime radio propaganda.
Book
The Thought War-- Japanese Imperial Propaganda
The only English- language book that delves into the intricacies of WWII Japanese propaganda
Book chapter
"Planes, Trains and Games: Selling Japan’s War in Asia"
An analysis of Japanese wartime kamishibai and the market for children's propaganda
Book Chapter
"Gojira as Japan's First Postwar Media Event," in the book, In Godzilla's Footsteps: Japanese Pop Culture Icons on the Global Stage
My chapter on Godzilla as Japan's first international popular culture icon.

Quick Links

See the East Asian Seminar Series I coordinate at Cambridge
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"Planes, Trains and Games: Selling Japan’s War in Asia"


This article appears in the Jennifer Purtle and Hans Bjarne Thomsen edited volume, Looking Modern: East Asian Visual Culture from Treaty Ports to World War II


Order the book on Amazon here