2023
July 2023, review in The Telegraph of The Lion and the Dragon
June 2023, review in The Telegraph of Korea: A New History of South and North
May 2023, review in The Telegraph of Traditionalism
May 2023, review for Engelsberg Ideas of Magisteria
March 2023, review in The Telegraph of China and Russia
February 2023, Engelsberg Ideas, ‘When the Samurai Came to America‘
2022
July 2022, Engelsberg Ideas, essay for ‘Great Books’ series on Bede Griffiths’ The Golden String
July 2022, Engelsberg Ideas, essay on Japanese and German rearmament
May 2022, The Telegraph, How the Oscar Wilde of Japan Tried to Stage a Military Coup
April 2022, The Telegraph, From Chinoiserie to Fu Manchu
April 2022, Engelsberg Ideas, ‘Mishima’s Search for Meaning in Postwar Japan’
April 2022, review in The Telegraph of The Avoidable War?
Spring 2022, Royal Academy Magazine, ‘Demon with a Brush‘
February 2022, review in The Telegraph of In the Camps & How I Survived a Chinese ‘Re-Education’ Camp
February 2022, Engelsberg Ideas, ‘Yosano Akiko – A Great of Modern Japanese Poetry‘
January 2022, The Telegraph, Jessica Kingdon’s Ascension
January 2022, review in The Telegraph of Kingdom of Characters
2021
December 2021, review in The Telegraph of Pearl Harbor & Hitler’s Gamble
November 2021, review in The Telegraph of The Sisters Mao
October 2021, The Telegraph, ‘Cinema’s New Cold War’
October 2021, review in The Telegraph of Ai Weiwei’s memoir, 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows
July 2021: review in The Telegraph of The Chinese Communist Party: A Century in Ten Lives & China’s Leaders: From Mao to Now
February 2021: review in The Telegraph of Jonathan Clements’ The Emperor’s Feast
July 2021, BBC History Magazine, ‘Tokyo Olympics 1964’
2020
December 2020: review in The Telegraph of Jonathan Kaufman’s Kings of Shanghai
May 2020: BBC History Magazine, ‘What is History’s Greatest Mystery?’
2019
May 2019: History Today, ‘Why Japan Stopped Fighting‘
April 2019: review in The Telegraph of Julia Lovell’s Maoism: A Global History
March 2019: review in The Guardian of Naoko Abe’s ‘Cherry’ Ingram
January 2019: The New York Times, ‘Marie Kondo and the Life-Changing Magic of Japanese Soft Power’
January 2019: review in The Telegraph of Ramachandra Guha’s Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, 1914 – 48
2018
November 2018: The Guardian, Top 10 Books about Japan
November 2018: BBC History Magazine, Pearl Harbor and Samurai ‘Mon’
October 2018: Essay on ghosts in Japanese culture, for The Telegraph‘s Saturday Review
September 2018: feature piece in The Telegraph, on Paul Fonoroff’s Chinese Movie Magazines
August 2018: Aeon Magazine, ‘Ghosts on the Shore‘
August 2018: review in The Telegraph of Stephen Platt’s Imperial Twilight
July 2018: review in The Spectator of Alex Kerr’s Another Kyoto
June 2018: BBC World Histories, ‘Japan’s Growing Pains’
2017 & earlier
January 2017: History Today, ‘Japan’s Charles Dickens’
October 2016: Aeon Magazine, ‘The Be All and End All’
July 2016: BBC News Magazine, ‘How Japan Came to Believe in Depression’
April 2016: review in The Telegraph of Frank Dikotter’s The Cultural Revolution
December 2015: review in The Telegraph of Kenzaburo Oe’s Death By Water
August 2015: BBC News Magazine, ‘Three Western Myths About Japan‘
December 2014: BBC History Magazine, ‘Real Lives of the Kamikaze’ [accompanying podcast here]
November 2014: Aeon Magazine, ‘Into Nothingness‘
November 2014: History Today, ‘What Were the Wartime Japanese Thinking?‘
June 2014: review in The Telegraph of Ben Shepard’s Headhunters: the Search for a Science of the Mind
January 2014: Aeon Magazine, ‘Silent Communion: Is Christian Meditation a Contradiction?‘
November 2012: Aeon Magazine, ‘Couched in Kindness: Jakucho Setouchi and Japanese Psychoanalysis’