My first book, The Narrowing Sea: Fukuoka, Pusan, and the Rise and Fall of an Imperial Region is officially out today (Dec 2). It’s an urban history of empire, an imperial history of urbanization, and contains the histories of many people who moved across the Tsushima Straits btw 1876-1953.

found someone for anthro, but looks like we also need someone for メディア文化論, another class thats been done by me or Oyama Shinji in the past. undergrad level, in Japanese. can be either spring or fall next year. please get in touch if you'd like to pick up a class in Kyoto!

The Art Research Center at Ritsumeikan University invites applications for research funding for early career researcher-led projects in Japanese arts & culture + digital humanities. Application Deadline: Dec 15. Please see below for more details. www.arc.ritsumei.ac.jp/e/news/pc/02...

found someone for anthro, but looks like we also need someone for メディア文化論, another class thats been done by me or Oyama Shinji in the past. undergrad level, in Japanese. can be either spring or fall next year. please get in touch if you'd like to pick up a class in Kyoto!

this line must have felt irresistible "...a nationwide surge of aggression by bears that is testing Japan’s traditional belief in harmonious coexistence with nature." www.nytimes.com/2025/11/20/w...

in case anyone is in Leiden tomorrow www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/events/20...

they said it couldn't be helped, but someone kept believing

Call for nominations for the Richard J. Samuels Dissertation Award in Japanese Studies from the United States-Japan Foundation (USJF). us-jf.org/en/news/usjf...

ketchup, catsup

local academic types: looking for a Kansai local who can teach Intro to Anthropology spring/fall 2026 term in English here at Ritsumeikan in the College of IR (Kinugasa campus NW Kyoto). flexible on which day of the week. students are very international and eager. enrollment ranges from 20-40.

nice condensed McLuhan clip for class this evening www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pco...

enjoyed this new-ish (but finally read by me) piece from Chigusa Yamaura www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

stumbled into an 80s ambient industrial goth experimental music kissa in the Kyushu countryside Nocturnal Emissions? Current 93? Throbbing Gristle? Controlled Bleeding? ✔️, ☑️, ✔️, and ☑️ (jazz too!)

「激論」に激が多過ぎた論

one of the better sunsets I’ve seen of late

multi-year Blackwater mercenary seems bad enough, honestly

Ishiba's address on the eightieth anniversary of the end of the war is really worth reading: japan.kantei.go.jp/content/0001...

added to the list www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/b...

oh woe the pain of booking hotels in Europe as someone paid in yen

good workplaces host good deathmetal concerts

Part of ICE’s efforts will be setting up random traffic stops and checkpoints throughout the city and making educated guesses about who to detain and who not to detain. These 'Guess Stops' will be staffed by special agents known as Guess Stop Officers, or 'Guess-Stop-O for short.

The article @robfahey.net and I wrote on Sanseito is finally out (open access). We describe the party’s conspiracy worldview and how it shapes its policies and organizational features. I may do a thread to include the work I have done since finalizing the draft. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

your balcony view (if you were the U.S. consul in Osaka)

The Republican reaction to Kirk’s murder has been a campaign of state repression that ends with Trumpist toadies deciding what Americans are allowed to think, do and say. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

This is ofc a far greater attack on free speech than Kimmel going off the air

towel‘s hot, summer‘s over

(for Kansai-area architecture nerds) there is a neat house by Wakabayashi Hiroyuki for sale in southeast Kyoto: suumo.jp/chukoikkodat...

not quite autumn

one of Kyoto‘s better biryanis

My piece for Chihei is available in bookstores on Friday!

I wrote about how three events in 1996 - the Telecom Act, Welfare Reform Act, & "Changing Highbrow Taste" article - signal the beginning of the end of taste www.its-her-factory.com/2025/09/1996...

A new essay from me synthesizing the rich body of media criticism in Japanese focused on the practice of "August journalism" (八月ジャーナリズム): the tendency for rehearsed, compressed, and hollowed-out coverage of war memory each August. apjjf.org/2025/9/fedman

More journalists have been killed in Gaza than in the US Civil War, WW I and II, the Korean War & the Vietnam War combined. In this special report, we detail the growing death toll among (mainly) Palestinian journalists and ask, has our silence enabled their slaughter? www.fccj.or.jp/number-1-shi...

catching up with the classics

not out of the woods yet but it kinda feels sliiiightly less hot?

long and interesting conversation about where the US is and is headed www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/o...

Kyoto’s new monsoon season proceeds every afternoon like clockwork

we’ve arrived at the (新!) rainy season

Further evidence of Japanese society distancing itself from traditional religious practices

what Suntory has decided beer drinkers should drink once the beer has run out

BBC International Editor Jeremy Bowen has confirmed that the entire Al Jazeera team in Gaza City has been killed.

Full-time faculty position available at Doshisha U. in Kyoto, application deadline September 1. jrecin.jst.go.jp/seek/SeekJor...

NY Times special article on the renewed need to think about Hiroshima and the End. Complete with utterly powerful Japanese poetry by Matsuo Atsuyuki and photographs by Kawada Kikuji. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

(in case you were wondering)

the rhetorical positioning in all these speeches of "one minute they were happy and living their best lives, the next: A-bomb" seems like a big elision of what life was already like on Aug 5 in Hiroshima

www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20... Kyoto in at number five 🙃