Professor Barak Kushner FBA

Summary

Barak Kushner was educated at Brandeis University and Princeton University in the United States. He is currently Professor of East Asian history at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Corpus Christi College. Kushner’s scholarship crosses geographical and disciplinary boundaries to examine war, empire, propaganda, and historical memory in modern East Asia. He also has a deep interest in how food history impacts political relations. Prior to moving to the UK, he taught in the US and worked for the US government in Washington DC.

From 2013-2019 he managed a European Research Council project entitled, The Dissolution of the Japanese Empire and the Struggle for Legitimacy in Post-war East Asia. That research produced the American Historical Association’s 2016 John K. Fairbank Prize-winning book, Men to Devils, Devils to Men: Japanese War Crimes and Chinese Justice. He received the 15th Nakasone Yasuhiro Award for Excellence and was a visiting fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (2019-2020).

He has published widely in monographs and edited volumes, and also translated Japanese books on media history and comfort women. Kushner hosted and narrated several Chinese television documentaries on war crimes and postwar justice. In 2024, he starred in a Japanese TV documentary concerning the history of ramen and its global impact. Kushner began his career as a high school teacher of social studies in Chicago. Later, he travelled to Iwate, Japan where he taught English, lived in a Buddhist temple, and attended Japanese elementary school.

After completing courses in advanced Japanese, he taught western history in Shenyang, China where he also started studying Chinese and began research in Chinese history. He enjoys British comedy as well as traditional Japanese comedy and is married to former Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction, and Head of UNDRR Mami Mizutori.