Waiting for the Cool Moon

“Waiting for the Cool Moon is rigorous, invigorating, and consequential for how we read, see, study, research, and understand both the history of Japan in the interwar years and history more generally. This hugely impressive book is a magnificent achievement.” - Rebecca E. Karl, author of China’s Revolutions in the Modern World: A Brief Interpretive History

“Waiting for the Cool Moon is a fierce, passionate book, one that is as suited to these times as it is to the period it explores. Wendy Matsumura brings a powerful theoretical apparatus to bear: the Marxian analysis of her earlier work is transformed by her intense engagement with the theoretical and comparative work of Black and Indigenous women scholars. The effects of this encounter are profound. By attending to revolutionary practice and acknowledging the pain and sadness of absence, Matsumura locates the urgent ethical commitment of a radical historian. An outstanding critical history.” - Christopher T. Nelson, author of Dancing with the Dead: Memory, Performance, and Everyday Life in  Postwar Okinawa

"In the scope, method, and the author’s critical reflection on her positionality as a US researcher, Waiting for the Cool Moon reaches out to a wider audience than Japanese studies and offers a blueprint of historiography aimed toward collective liberation." - Nozomi Nakaganeku Saito, Japan Forum

"A must read for anyone interested in anti-imperialist struggles in the heart of Japan’s empire and beyond." - Ken Kawashima, Pacific Affairs