PMJS Publication Announcement: May 2026 (AND SURVEY)
Abigail MacBain
Dear colleagues,
This year marks 5 years that PMJS has been sending out monthly publication announcements! This seems like an opportune time to review the submission form and announcements email format to see how they are serving our community. If you have any thoughts, feelings, or recommendations, please fill out this simple survey: https://forms.gle/JGrHSXAJA3hbDbug7. It’s just 2 questions (and the option to add your name/email address if you’re open to potentially being contacted for additional information on your answers). I will keep the survey open throughout May and June.
Thank you!
And now, below is our monthly bulletin compiling information on publications by and recommendations from PMJS members. All details below were submitted through the PMJS Publication Announcements online form.
Publication type: Book
Title: Sacred Journals and Institutional Rivalries: Pilgrimage Mandalas and the Art of Fundraising in Medieval Japan
Author: Talia Andrei
Affiliation: Wesleyan University, Assistant Professor
Summary: Sacred Journeys and Institutional Rivalries is a detailed and richly illustrated exploration of pilgrimage mandalas (sankei mandara). These large-scale, brightly colored landscape paintings, which appeared in late-medieval Japan, present aerial views of sacred sites, the roads leading to them, and the rites performed there. Carried by itinerant monks and nuns, they were used in lively narrative performances. These paintings displayed a new kind of artistic language by mixing depictions of otherworldly miracles with everyday pleasures accessible to all would-be visitors.
After exploring the origins of this art, Talia Andrei engages in a series of detective-like analyses, unraveling the subtle hints of institutional networks and power struggles concealed within the figural and architectural motifs of the paintings. This approach shows how visual sources, when read with and against textual records, can fundamentally change, shift, or enhance what we know about a given time and place in history. Studied in this way, a pilgrimage mandala not only reveals hidden clues to historical uncertainties left murky in the textual archive but also serves as a visual testament to the cultural and institutional forces that shaped its creation.
Release Date: May 2026
Website: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674303393
Contact: tan...@wesleyan.edu
Publication type:
Title: Japanese Mythology: A Guide
Author: Matthieu Felt
Affiliation: University of Florida, Associate Professor
Summary: Japanese Mythology: A Guide presents key Japanese myths in a format that is both rigorous and readable. Matthieu Felt brings together Japanese myths as they appear in the oldest extant sources and the various methodologies that have been used to study these myths during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Sources are indicated for readers wishing to do further research with original texts or to use Japanese myths in a comparative capacity. The guide also summarizes the work of several major twentieth-century mythologists from Japan, North America, and Europe such as Hirafuji Kikuko, Kōnoshi Takamitsu, David Lurie, Torquil Duthie, Klaus Antoni, Raji Steineck, and Alain Rocher, among many others.
Release Date: April 17, 2026
Website: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/japanese-mythology-9780197686034?cc=us&lang=en&
Contact: mf...@ufl.edu
Publication type: Book
Title: Rutgers Meets Japan: A Trans-Pacific Network of the Late Nineteenth Century
Author: Haruko Wakabayashi & Fernanda Perrone
Affiliation: Rutgers University; Associate Teaching Professor, Archivist
Summary: Rutgers was at the center of a vast transnational network of leaders, students, teachers, and missionaries in the late nineteenth century. New Brunswick became a hub of Japanese students, some of whom left Japan during the turbulent bakumatsu period. They formed a network that extended to New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and other cities on the east coast. The network soon encompassed their American classmates, professors, and Protestant ministers. Meanwhile, Rutgers graduates who left for Japan as teachers and missionaries became part of a network of reformist leaders and Japanese returnees that extended to schools, colleges, and missions in Japan, and formed the foundation of Japan’s modern education. Through contributions from scholars and archivists in the U.S., Canada, and Japan, Rutgers Meets Japan aims to reconstruct the early Rutgers-Japan connections and examine the role and impact of this transnational network on Japan and the U.S. in the late nineteenth century.
Release Date: January 2026
Website: https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/rutgers-meets-japan/9781978839106
Contact: h.waka...@rutgers.edu
Note: RUP 30 for 30% Discount
Also check out "Rutgers Meets Japan: A Digital Companion" at https://collections.libraries.rutgers.edu/rutgers-meets-japan
Publication type: Article
Title: Confusion over Cathay: attitudes to Chinese material in mediaeval Japanese poetic criticism
Author: Thomas E. McAuley
Affiliation: University of Sheffield
Summary: Focussing on the Roppyakuban uta’awase (‘Poetry Contest in Six Hundred Rounds’; 1193–94), this study highlights the conflicting attitudes between the contest’s judge, Fujiwara no Shunzei, and the participant Kenshō. Evidence from the contest reveals that while poets frequently incorporated Sinitic allusions and diction, Shunzei often criticised such usage, arguing that distinct aesthetic standards applied to uta (Japanese poetry) versus shi (Sinitic poetry). Conversely, Kenshō actively utilised Sinitic sources to validate his poetic positions and challenge Shunzei’s critical authority. Ultimately, the article demonstrates that while early mediaeval poet/critics did regard Sinitic material as a resource for the composition and criticism of uta, such usage could be contested and was subject to wider critical standards governing waka composition
Release Date: 19 April 2026
Website:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09555803.2026.2656204
Contact: t.e.m...@sheffield.ac.ukTo recommend a title for next month’s announcement, please fill out the online form. Submissions can be submitted by authors themselves or by PMJS members who are eager to share other scholars’ recent publications.
And please take a moment to fill out the survey if you have anything to share on the submission form or announcement email: https://forms.gle/JGrHSXAJA3hbDbug7
For any questions or comments on the submission format, please contact Abigail MacBain (abigail...@ed.ac.uk). Note: Please do not email requesting a publication to be posted; only those submitted through the above form will be listed.