Barak Kushner

“Sweetness and Empire: Sugar Consumption in Imperial Japan”
This work analyzes how new products altered the concept of ‘sweetness’, as embodied in items processed with sugar, as an element in ‘modern’ food. I argue that, although sugar was consumed as a luxury item in early-modern Japan, in the early decades of the twentieth century, and especially during the war years, the consumption of sweets became inseparable from the idea of Japanese modernity, linked to the act of consumption within the sphere of Japanese empire.

Dreams of Empire
The catalogue was created for the Caskey Lees, Arts of Pacific Asia Show in San Francisco in February 2011. There were 150 pieces on display, all drawn from the MHJ collection. For the 40 page, color catalogue I wrote the main essay, "The Drive to Mobilize Wartime Society," which illuminates the historical, political and social context in which these extraordinary textiles were produced.

“Going for the Gold - Health and Sports in Japan's Quest for Modernity”
This is a chapter in William Tsutsui and Michael Baskett, eds., The East Asian Olympiads, 1934–2008: Building Bodies and Nations in Japan, Korea, and China, Folkestone: Global Oriental, 2011.

“The Hitler costume fiasco shows Japan has lost touch with its past”
Article in the 'Comment Is Free' of the Guardian Newspaper

Treacherous Allies: The Cold War in East Asia and American Postwar Anxiety
The postwar US federal government spent a decade, initiated two federal treason trials, and dispensed over one million dollars in legal pursuit of John Provoo for his crimes in the Philippines as a POW and as a propaganda agent for the Japanese. In a strange perversion of justice the US attorney even invited to the federal court Provoo’s former captors – Japanese propagandists, military officials and POW guards – to establish his guilt. Why was the US government so keen to pursue and charge a lone second world war POW with treason? What dread did Provoo strike in the hearts of US officials? This article examines how Provoo embodied wartime and postwar American panic concerning East Asia, just as the situation in the region dramatically spiraled out of American control.

"Imperial Cuisines in Taisho Foodways," in Eric Rath and Stephanie Assman, eds., Japanese Foodways, Past and Present.
In this chapter I argue that Japanese foodways grew out of both a dialogue within Japan’s colonial empire and a discourse bent on separating the concept of national food away from and in distinction to China. For post-Meiji Restoration (1868) Japan, we cannot understand “Japanese cuisine” in a geographical and historical vacuum as a product that grew up in isolation. Indeed, one of the major ideological shifts in identity during the Taisho era (1912-26) was the incorporation and consumption of Chinese food and its influence on Japanese cuisine and diet, even as the very concept of Japanese cuisine was forming.

"Pawns of Empire: Postwar Taiwan, Japan and the Dilemma of War Crimes”
Examining the plight of the Taiwanese, who were pawns in the larger conflict of World War Two, helps us to understand the complicated process of the breakdown of the Japanese empire. The postwar legal adjudication of BC class Japanese war crimes in East Asia is a key element in unwinding the historical complexity of postwar power shifts, the formation of a Taiwanese identity, and its connection to Japan’s postwar foreign relations goals. This paper considers three
inter-related issues – analyzing how Japanese rule was restructured in the postwar former colonies, dissecting the prosecution of lower-level Japanese war crimes, and resolving the conundrum of collaboration within the former empire. These problems are tied intimately together due to the transformation of postwar identity and colonial politics.

Some new thoughts about humor and the state of affairs in Sino-Japan relations
Is that really funny? – humor and identity in Japan and China

Online article about the history of ramen and the politics of food in Japan and China.
Get the quick and dirty lowdown on the history of ramen and impress your friends and colleagues with your savvy and deep appreciation of food history in East Asia.

"'Noodle-ology': the politics of cuisine"
A very brief article detailing that what we often think is national cuisine originates from unlikely sources. Learn how Chinese interaction with pre-war Japan helped change national taste and influence the postwar. (Produced in the University of Cambridge Research Horizons journal, Summer 2008, p. 15).

"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

The Thought War-- Japanese Imperial Propaganda
The postwar perception of Japanese wartime propaganda was that it was a failure, falling short of reaching its major goal of unifying the battlefront with the home front. The Thought War, reveals actually how a shooting war of enormous magnitude, ferocity, and breadth gained the participation of a civilian population that eagerly embraced its aims and supported its proponents.

"Planes, Trains and Games: Selling Japan’s War in Asia"
During Japan’s war to establish dominance in Asia, Japanese soldiers did not expect to return home alive, and few considered it even possible that Japan’s war would end quickly. In light of the demographic determinants that many believed would aid Japan’s military power on the Chinese mainland, and later against the Allies, Japan’s youth culture played a dominant role.

The purpose of this research is to center on the quasi unofficial, not the schools and educational content directly managed by the government, but that which existed outside the school, outside the daily purview and grasp of the government. In this regard, kamishibai, paper plays, fit the bill perfectly. Certainly kamishibai were censored, but the multiplicity of companies that produced the plays and the incorporation of traditional stories like Ōgon batto remained a potent force.

Co-authored with Sato Masaharu, “Digesting Postwar Japanese Media: American Propaganda in Occupied Japan,” Diplomatic History, January 2005, p. 27-48.
This article looks at the role American journalism played in "democratizing" Japan and the unique position of Reader's Digest.

"Gojira as Japan's First Postwar Media Event," in the book, In Godzilla's Footsteps: Japanese Pop Culture Icons on the Global Stage
See my chapter in Bill Tsutsui's edited volume on Godzilla. Everything you thought you wanted to know about Godzilla and then some.

“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.
Find out if the Japanese valued humor during World War Two

"'Negro Propaganda Operations': Japan's short-wave radio information broadcasts for World War II Black Americans"
Co-authored with Japanese scholar Sato Masaharu, this research is the only treatment using Japanese and American archives that examines the programs Japan initiated to attract Black-Americans toward Japan's side. Ultimately, the propaganda failed, but the lengths to which Japan stretched demonstrates a deep understanding of the racial divides that affected the United States during the 1930s and 1940s.

Cannibalizing Japanese Media - The Case of Issei Sagawa
This is the first article in English concerning the Sagawa case and its treatment in the Japanese media.