Banner Image Source Original image held by the Harvard-Yenching Library
of the Harvard College Library, Harvard University

About

Since 1936 the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies (HJAS) has without interruption published outstanding original research and in-depth reviews of books about China, Japan, Korea, and Inner Asia. HJAS publishes the highest-quality scholarship in a multidisciplinary forum that includes premodern and modern literature, art history, and religious studies; digital humanities; premodern history and social science; and modern history and humanistic social science through the mid-twentieth century. The Journal values analytically rigorous articles that place specialized research findings in a broader context for scholars working across East and Inner Asia. HJAS occasionally publishes clusters of articles that present focused and vibrant debate on specific topics. The editors welcome inquiries about special issues on focused topics.

Editors

David Howell

David L. Howell

Editor

David L. Howell is the Robert K. and Dale J. Weary Professor of Japanese History at Harvard University and Editor of the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. He received his B.A. from the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo and Ph.D. in History from Princeton University. He taught at the University of Texas at Austin and Princeton before joining the Harvard faculty in 2010. Howell is the author of Capitalism from Within: Economy, Society, and the State in a Japanese Fishery (1995) and Geographies of Identity in Nineteenth-Century Japan (2005) as well as numerous articles. 

Howell’s research focuses on the social history of Japan in the Tokugawa (1603–1868) and Meiji (1868–1912) periods. He is particularly interested in the ways changing political and economic institutions affected the lives and livelihoods of ordinary people over the course of the nineteenth century. His current projects include a short survey of the Meiji Restoration period and a history of human waste and garbage in the cities of Tokugawa and Meiji Japan. He is also a co-editor of a new edition of the Cambridge History of Japan.

Editors

head shot of Max Bohnenkamp

Max L. Bohnenkamp

Managing Editor

Max L. Bohnenkamp is a scholar of modern Chinese literature and culture and a freelance translator specializing in Chinese scholarly writings in the Humanities and Social Sciences and fiction. He holds a PhD from the University of Chicago and has taught on Chinese literature, popular culture, and cinema at NYU, Harvard, and the University of Iowa. Bohnenkamp’s research focuses on the adaptation of Chinese folk culture for modern and contemporary literature, cinema, and performing arts, the reception of Western and Soviet theories of literary and dramatic aesthetics in China, and the relationship of creative expression to politics and critical social theory. He is currently completing a book-length study on the famous revolutionary drama The White-Haired Girl and his most recent translation is a collection of essays by Chinese scholars of religion, entitled Beyond Indigenization: Christianity and Chinese History in a Global Context, published in 2023. 

HJAS Editorial Board 2023–2024

Janet Gyatso Stephen Owen
Sun Joo Kim James Robson
Yukio Lippit  
   

HJAS Advisory Board 2023–2024

Ryūichi Abé David McCann
Peter K. Bol  Melissa McCormick
Carter J. Eckert Michael Puett
Mark C. Elliott Michael Szonyi
Rowan K. Flad Karen Thornber
Andrew Gordon Xiaofei Tian
Helen Hardacre Leonard W. J. van der Kuijp
Wilt L. Idema David Der-wei Wang
Su Yun Kim, The University of Hong Kong Eugene Y. Wang
Shigehisa Kuriyama Tomiko Yoda
Wai-yee Li Alexander Zahlten
Zhiying Li, Sichuan University  

 

Contributors

Editorial Assistance: Hwei Ru Ong and Rachel Turner

Composition: Birdtrack Press

HJAS thanks the Harvard University Asia Center, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Min Young-Chul Memorial Fund at the Korea Institute, and Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies for their generous support of an editorial assistant position.