Nathan Shockey examines the emergence of new forms of reading, writing, and thinking in Japan from the last years of the nineteenth century through the first decades of the twentieth. The Typographic Imagination presents a multivalent vision of the rise of mass print media and the transformation of modern Japanese literature, language, and culture.

By examining the manufacturing, commercial, and cultural activities of the maverick industrialist Chen Diexian (1879-1940), Eugenia Lean illustrates how lettered men of early-twentieth-century China engaged in "vernacular industrialism," the pursuit of industry and science outside of conventional venues.

Homecomings tells the story of late-returning Japanese soldiers and their struggle to adapt to a newly peaceful and prosperous society. Yoshikuni Igarashi explores what Japanese society accepted and rejected, complicating the definition of a postwar consensus and prolonging the experience of war for both Japanese soldiers and the nation.

Socialist Cosmopolitanism offers an innovative interpretation of literary works from the Mao era that reads Chinese socialist literature as world literature. Nicolai Volland demonstrates that Chinese socialist literature was not driven solely by politics but by an ambitious-but ultimately doomed-attempt to redraw the literary world map.