Prof. Kushner received his BA from Brandeis University and then began his career as a high school teacher of social studies in Chicago. Later, he traveled to Iwate, Japan where he taught English, lived in a Buddhist temple, and attended Japanese elementary school, studying Japanese along with other students ages 6-12. On and off he lived in Japan for about 7 years - in Tokyo, Yokohama and Iwate, at times studying at Rikkyo University and Tokyo University. After completing courses in advanced Japanese, Prof. Kushner was an editor/ translator at the National Institute for Research Advancement, a think tank in Tokyo. He taught western history at Shenyang Teacher's University in the north of China where he also studied Chinese and began research in Chinese history. After returning to the United States he attended graduate school at Princeton University, did more Chinese language training in Taipei, Taiwan and then received a PhD in history.
Prof. Kushner teaches undergraduate courses relating to modern East Asian history.
*Professor Kushner will be on sabbatical leave until September of 2026 but welcomes applications for the PhD programme with a start in the fall of 2026. Potential applicants should contact Professor Kushner directly for queries about 2026 admission.*
Prof. Kushner is pleased to supervise graduate students interested in imperial and postwar Japanese history, 20th century Japan-Taiwan, as well as Sino-Japanese relations, the history of the Cold War in East Asia, and history of war crimes in East Asia.
Barak Kushner is Professor of East Asian History and was Co-Chair of the Faculty of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge (2021-2024). He has edited four volumes and written four monographs. His most recent book is The Geography of Injustice: East Asia's Battle between Memory and History (Cornell University Press, 2014). Prior books include: Men to Devils, Devils to Men: Japanese War Crimes and Chinese Justice (Harvard University Press, 2015), (Winner of the American Historical Association's 2016 John K. Fairbank Prize), and in a Chinese translation. In addition, he penned Slurp! A culinary and social history of ramen - Japan's favorite noodle soup (Brill, 2012), available in a Japanese translation, traditional Chinese translation, and Chinese mainland version. Slurp! was awarded the 2013 Sophie Coe Prize for Food History, the longest-running and most generous prize for writing in food history in the English language. The Thought War - Japanese Imperial Propaganda (Hawaii 2006), is also available in a Japanese translation. In 2020, he hosted and narrated three episodes (of an eight-part series) of an award winning Chinese television documentary series on war crimes trials produced by the Shanghai Media Group. For more on the series see a long Chinese article on the Asia-Pacific War Crimes Trials documentary.
From 2013 to 2019 Kushner managed a £1.2 million European Research Council funded project, “The Dissolution of the Japanese Empire and the Struggle for Legitimacy in Postwar East Asia, 1945–1965.” This grant examined the impact of the fall of the Japanese empire in East Asia. Over six years, the project resulted in three volumes: The Dismantling of Japan's Empire in East Asia: De-imperialization, Postwar Legitimation and Imperial Afterlife, (Routledge 2017), Overcoming Empire in Post-Imperial East Asia: Repatriation, Redress and Rebuilding (Bloomsbury 2020), and In the Ruins of the Japanese Empire: Imperial Violence, State Destruction, and the Reordering of Modern East Asia (Hong Kong University Press 2020). You can view all the members and affiliates, as well as the output, conferences, and workshops that the project produced here. Barak also co-edited a volume about Japan's lost decades with former Asahi Newspaper editor-in-chief, Funabashi Yoichi, entitled Examining Japan's Lost Decades, also in a Japanese translation.
Current PhD students
| On I Lam: Sewing the Red Flag: The Inter-Party Relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and the Japanese Communist Party (1950-1958). |
| Ko-Hang Liao: Rethinking Defeat: Japan, Chiang Kai-shek and the 'White Group' in Taiwan, 1949-1969 |
| Reyhan Silingar: Mobilising Monarchy: Emperor Hirohito and Japan’s Imperial House Diplomacy, 1921-1975 |
| Sheung Chun Jonathan Yeung: Sino-Japanese interactions in the context of early 20th-century Chinese students in Japan |
| Mariah Zhong: The “Asia Problem” in Postwar East Asia: Negotiating Postimperial Boundaries between Japan, PRC/China and ROC/Taiwan |
