Hardacre, Helen, ed. The Postwar Development of Japanese Studies in the United States.  Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1998.  423 pp.
In May 1995, Helen Hardacre, Director of the Reischauer Institute, initiated a project to commemorate both the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Institute and the 50th anniversary of the end of the Pacific War.  The aim of the project was to publish a volume documenting the postwar development of Japanese studies in the United States in a number of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences.  By late 1995 twelve noted scholars had been selected as contributors and were invited to present their papers in the Institute's Japan Forum series between spring 1996 and spring 1997.  These talks formed a special part of the Forum during two academic years. The resulting volume comprises essays in the fields of history, religion, anthropology, literature, art, political science, and law.  Each chapter chronicles postwar scholarship in a particular discipline and provides a useful bibliography. The authors include, from Harvard, Harold Bolitho, Albert M. Craig, Andrew Gordon, Helen Hardacre, Akira Iriye, and John M. Rosenfield; from Princeton, Kent E. Calder and Martin Collcutt; John W. Dower from MIT; Norma Field from the University of Chicago; Jennifer Robertson from the University of Michigan; and Frank K. Upham from New York University. Taken as a whole, the essays suggest that since 1945 Japanese studies in the United States has developed in relation to several factors, among them social and political change in Japan and the United States, shifts in dominant scholarly concerns about Japan, and changing evaluations of area studies. The volume serves to put current debates in historical perspective and helps to assess the field's achievements, to identify areas requiring more work, and to chart directions for the future.

Hardacre, Helen, ed., with Adam L. Kern.  New Directions in the Study of Meiji Japan.  Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1997. 782 pp. 
This volume of proceedings from the Conference on Meiji Studies (held at Harvard University May 4-6, 1994) presents a rare multinational interchange among professors, researchers, and graduate students investigating Japan.  The authors present an array of intellectual perspectives on topics in the social sciences, humanities, and arts, employing a variety of theories and methodologies.  The fifty-three essays reflect both an appreciation of past scholarship and a determination to destabilize existing paradigms about Meiji Japan in favor of a multiplicity of perspectives, perspectives that privilege subjectivity and non-elite groups.  Attention to relations of power challenges the notions of modernization as the master narrative in Japan's recent history and of consensus as the primary characteristic of social interaction in Japan.  The book will be useful not only to Meiji scholars, but also to those interested in contemporary Japan and postmodern theories of power.

Deptula, Nancy Monteith, and Michael M. Hess.  The Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies: A Twenty-Year Chronicle. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1996. 225 pp.
This volume traces the growth of Japanese studies at Harvard from 1895-1995 as well as the history of the Japan/Reischauer Institute from 1973-1995. The author, Nancy Monteith Deptula, was associated with Harvard in many capacities for forty-two years and was on staff at the Reischauer Institute from its founding in 1973 until she retired from her position as Executive Director in 1995.