East Asia for All

We originally planned for this episode to focus on the 2014 film The Interview, but we ended up talking about the Olympics, U.S.-North Korean relations, the Korean War, and even a Korean folk story about the war! If you want some perspective on all the recent developments in North Korea, listen to this episode, featuring an interview with Christine Hong, professor of literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Tampopo, Juzo Itami's "noodle western," came out in 1985, back when most Americans had never even heard of ramen. Join us for a discussion of this hilarious film as well as the history of ramen in Japan and the U.S.

ACRUSH, a popular new boy band, is also one of the most recent examples of gender-bending in China. Join us for a discussion of ACRUSH and a whirlwind tour of China's long history of women who refuse to be limited by their gender.

We're talking about Chinese TV-viewing habits in this mini episode about the Simpsons in China and bullet subtitles. Did you know that the Simpsons, often considered a quintessentially American television show, is popular in China? And have you ever heard of "bullet subtitles" (danmu), a live-chat function on many Chinese streaming websites?  We discuss all this and more! 

This mini episode has it all! We play the board game "Home Play," discuss the history of LGBTQ people in Taiwan, and respond to a listener question with help from Prof. Chia-rong Wu. 

Two urban Chinese youth are sent to live in the countryside during the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) in Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, a film based on the novel of the same name. In our fifth full episode, we discuss the film, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and more, with help from Profs. Chris Connery and Emily Honig.

Our fourth full episode features a discussion of Warriors of the Rainbow, Wei Te-sheng's 2011 film about the 1930 Wushe Uprising in Taiwan. We brought in Dr. Leo Ching to help us discuss the movie, Taiwan's history of colonization, and Taiwanese identity formation. 

This mini episode features Chinese memes about North Korea, censorship of those memes in mainland China, and a brief history of the division of the Korean peninsula to help explain the current political situation. 

Our third full episode features a discussion of Ghost in the Shell, a long-running Japanese pop culture franchise, as well as issues of whitewashing, gender, and technology in the Japanese and American popular imaginations. Dr. Noriko Aso came in to help us discuss all these issues and more.

Our second episode features a discussion of Japanese writer/politician/singer Nosaka Akiyuki and two of his works, Grave of the Fireflies and "American Hijiki." We brought in Dr. Alan Christy to help us discuss Nosaka's works, World War II in Japan, and the postwar American occupation.