Hannah Shepherd, "The Narrowing Sea: Fukuoka, Pusan, and the Rise and Fall of an Imperial Region" (U California Press, 2025)

About this episode

Hannah Shepherd discusses her book on the historical connections between Fukuoka and Pusan from the late 19th century to the Korean War.

In The Narrowing Sea: Fukuoka, Pusan, and the Rise and Fall of an Imperial Region (U California Press, 2025), Hannah Shepherd examines the shared histories of Pusan and Fukuoka over the eight decades from Japan's forced opening of Korea's ports in 1876 to the end of the Korean War in 1953. One city was Korean, the other Japanese; one was a burgeoning colonial port, the other a provincial city buoyed by imperial expansion. Wars, colonization, and capitalist industrialization forged intimate connections between the two, knitting together an imperial region that transcended its maritime boundaries. Drawing on both Japanese and Korean archives, and emphasizing the concept of imperial urbanization, Shepherd challenges traditional views of empire and urban growth and shows how local networks, migration, and capital flows shaped the region's exploitative and uneven geographies. The waters between Fukuoka and Pusan narrowed through intensified interactions that continued even after the end of empire, creating enduring legacies for the postwar and postcolonial eras. Dr. Hannah Shepherd is Assistant Professor of History at Yale University. Dr. Samee Siddiqui is Assistant Professor of World…

People in this episode

Guest: Hannah Shepherd

Topics covered

• imperial history
• urbanization
• colonialism
• Korea
• Japan
• migration
• capital flows

Keywords

• Fukuoka
• Pusan
• imperial region
• colonial port
• urban growth
• migration
• capitalism
• Korean War
• Japanese archives
• Korean archives

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Yale University, Drury University, U California Press

Books & works: The Narrowing Sea: Fukuoka, Pusan, and the Rise and Fall of an Imperial Region

Places: Korea, Japan, Fukuoka, Pusan

More episodes of New Books in Korean Studies

• Paige Towers, "What They Stole: A Familicide Rooted in Intercountry Adoption" (U Iowa Press, 2026) · May 28, 2026 · 59 min
• Hannah Shepherd, "The Narrowing Sea: Fukuoka, Pusan, and the Rise and Fall of an Imperial Region" (U California Press, 2025) · May 27, 2026 · 1h 18m
• Gregg A. Brazinsky, "Cold War Comrades: An Emotional History of the Sino-North Korean Alliance" (Cambridge UP, 2026) · May 16, 2026 · 46 min
• Fyodor Tertititsky, "Pyongyang on the Brink: Sixteen Crises That Shaped North Korea" (Hurst, 2026) · May 14, 2026 · 35 min
• David Krolikoski, "Lyrical Translation: The Creation of Modern Poetry in Colonial Korea" (U Hawai'i Press, 2026) · May 2, 2026 · 1h 7m
• Myung-jin Han with Nicolas Levi, "I Was a North Korean Diplomat: Inside the Secret World of Pyongyang's Foreign Service" (Independently Published, 2026) · April 18, 2026 · 50 min