Academic Journal Article
Numerous complex issues concerning the history of Japanese war crimes cloud the trials that adjudicated justice in postwar East Asia. Discrepancies between fact and fiction, or facts that can be proven in a court of law, result in a situation that even today renders what actually happened during the creation of empire and the ensuing war in Asia open to interpretation. More than seven decades after the war, disagreements about the justice or injustice of these processes continue to feed political friction in the region.
"Ghosts of the Japanese Imperial Army: The ‘White Group’ (Baituan) and Early Post-war Sino-Japanese Relations,” Past and Present, volume 218, suppl 8 (Transnationalism and Contemporary Global History), (2013), p. 117-150.
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
Documentary TV Shows
A television documentary concerning the history of ramen and why it has become so popular across Japan and the globe. It aired in Japanese and English versions.
A Chinese television documentary in English and Chinese investigating the war crimes trials of the Japanese.
Book
This book argues that the war crimes tribunals in East Asia formed and cemented national divides that persist into the present day.
This book examines how factions of Nationalists and Communists within China structured the war crimes trials in ways meant to strengthen their competing claims to political rule. On the international stage, both China and Japan propagandized the tribunals, promoting or blocking them for their own advantage.
The only English language book to delve solely into Japanese wartime propaganda history.
Book Chapter
This is a larger work in Japanese analyzing issues concerning historical reconciliation in East Asia and edited by Professor Asano Toyomi of Waseda University. It is the first volume of a larger series focused on reconciliation studies.
This chapter tells the unknown story of how anchors from the Qing imperial navy played an ongoing role in the propaganda war between China and Japan.
Kushner delivered a talk for the Hoover Institute on this topic which can be seen here.
A different look at empire and juvenile delinquency in the Far East.
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.
Co-edited Book
In the Ruins of the Japanese Empire concludes that early East Asian Cold War history needs to be studied within the framework of post-imperial history.
In Overcoming Empire in Post-Imperial East Asia: Repatriation, Redress and Rebuilding Barak Kushner and Sherzod Muminov bring together an international team of leading scholars to explore the post-imperial history of the region.
This volume brings together the latest in Japanese and Western scholarship on the turbulent years following the end of Japan’s empire in East Asia.
To discuss the rebuilding of Japan, the authors argue that it is first essential to critically examine Japan’s ‘Lost Decades’ and this book offers a comprehensive overview of Japan’s recent 20 years of crisis.
Translation
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 from 1926-1989.
Catalogue
See my essay on Alan Marcuson's fantastic collection of imperial Japanese textiles.
Online Article
Brief Article
Download the article from the Cambridge University Research Magazine