The Modern Japan History Association (mjha.org) presents a "New Books on Japan" conversation between Garrett Washington (UMass Amherst), author of Church Space and the Capital in Prewar Japan (University of Hawai'i Press, 2022) and Jordan Sand (Georgetown University). The event is free and open to the public and will be held over Zoom. Pre-registration is required.

Date and Time: Monday, May 15, 7:30pm EST / 4:30pm PST

Register for Zoom here: https://mjha.org/Church-Space

Event details:

The Modern Japan History Association invites the wider community to a conversation with Garrett L. Washington (Associate Professor of History, University of Massachusetts Amherst). Professor Washington will be speaking about his new book, Church Space and the Capital in Prewar Japan (University of Hawai'i Press, 2022). Church Space and the Capital provides a spatially explicit study on the influence of the Protestant church in imperial Japan. Professor Washington examines the physical and social spaces that Tokyo's largest Japanese-led Protestant congregations cultivated between 1879 and 1923 and their broader social ties. These churches developed alongside, and competed with, the locational, architectural, and social spaces of Buddhism, Shinto, and Japanese New Religions. Japanese pastors and laypersons alike grappled with Christianity's relationships to national identity, political ideology, women's rights, Japanese imperialism, and modernity. Professor Washington's groundbreaking study offers answers to longstanding questions about Protestant Christianity's reputation and impact, but also goes further, using a space-centered perspective to focus attention on Japanese agency in the religion's metamorphosis and social impact. Jordan Sand (Professor of Japanese History, Georgetown University) will serve as discussant.