The Great Kantō Earthquake and the Chimera of National Reconstruction in Japan
(Companion website)

"The author is to be commended for his painstaking research, accessing popular journals, academic publications, folklore, song and commentaries issuing from political, military and business sources from the 1910s to the 20s... the only major work of its kind in English."

- The Japan Times

"Schencking's study... is based on an enormous amount of research. Well-written and compelling it... will act as a seminal work not only on the disaster itself, but on the politics and narrative of the disaster, for many years to come."

- Janet Hunter, Modern Asian Studies 50:1 (January 2016): 815-835.

"Schencking is a demon researcher... [who has created] a compelling narrative history as well as a satisfying analytic one... tenaciously researched, imaginatively argued, and carefully crafted."

- Mark Jones, Journal of Asian Studies (August 2016): 836-839.

"Schencking, a historian at the University of Hong Kong, has spent a decade and more excavating hitherto untranslated Japanese sources... his is the first book, either in English or Japanese, to cover the entire story from 1923 up to 1930."

- The LA Review of Books

"A gracefully written and searching analysis that places Japan's deadliest earthquake in historical context. An important contribution to the literature on natural disaster that moves beyond the clichés often told about reconstruction."

- Theodore Steinberg

"A meticulous study... The Great Kanto Earthquake is a superb work of historical scholarship and a major contribution to our understanding of modern Japan and modern natural disasters."

- Gregory Smits, Journal of Japanese Studies 40:2 (August 2014): 505-509.

"In Schencking's excellent and engaging book, an anatomy of a disaster reminiscent of Richard J. Evans's classic Death in Hamburg: Society and Politics in the Cholera Years: 1830-1910 ...[he] painstakingly reveals the anxieties, the hopes, and the political dynamism of 1920s Japan."

- Martin Dusinberre, The American Historical Review 119:2 (April 2014): 499-500.

"Overall, this meticulously researched monograph not only provides a rare picture of how Taishō Japan worked and saw itself, but also casts a sobering light on contemporary expectations that 3.11 will necessarily transform Japan into a stronger, greener and denuclearized country."

- Andre Haag, Pacific Affairs, 89:1 (March 2016).

"In fact, the book is the first study in English or Japanese that details how elites interpreted, constructed, and packaged the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake and attempted to use it for larger political, ideological, social and economic aims... Chapters can be read separately according to the reader's interests, whether they are historians, political scientists or Japanologists.

- Tamaki Tokita, Asian Studies Review 39:2 (February 2015): 244-346.

"The results are laudable, for Schencking has drawn together and contributed immeasurably to a number of otherwise disparate scholarly literatures... with an enviable eye for detail and with prose that is positively poetic... In sum, this is an excellent book that is much more than a recount of a cataclysmic event. It uses the quake as a conceptual lens through to which view 1920s Japan in its many complexities. Our understanding of Taishō Japan will only be the richer for Schencking's efforts.

- Peter Mauch, Japanese Studies 34:1 (May 2014): 105-107.

"Deeply researched and well written, it is a major contribution to the urban history of modern Japan as well as to the burgeoning field of disaster studies."

- Peter Duus

Making Waves: Politics, Propaganda, and the Emergence of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1868-1922

"Such a brief summary cannot do full justice to Schencking's argument, research, and presentation. In person and method, he is truly an international naval historian... a book that should make waves not just among naval historians or those who focus on modern Japan. Anyone interested in the dynamics of arms races or the Pacific origins of World War II or even the early twentieth century world more generally can read it with great profit. Banzai for a superb work by a rising star in the historical firmament."

- Roger Dingman, Journal of Military History 70:1 (January 2006): 249-250.

"Japan specialists and naval historians will relish this hearty new addition to the modern Japanese history canon. In a market driven by polish over substance, Making Waves is distinctly nourishing fare. This is the first English language analysis of the Japanese navy to precisely map the politics of naval expansion from 1868 to 1922. It will remain an essential reference for Japan scholars and naval historians for years to come."

- Frederick Dickinson, Pacific Affairs 78:4 (Winter 2005-06): 662-663.

"In eight well-argued and well written chapters, Schencking provides a new history of the Japanese navy that privileges the politics, bureaucracy, and economy behind naval development, part of a new theoretical school of naval history that articulates how modern navies evolved into remarkable complex, politically active, and significant organs of state out of simple economic and political necessity. Making Waves is an important book for historians of Japan, for naval and military historians, and for those interested in the relationship between politics and the military in the pursuit of modern state power."

- William McBride, Technology and Culture 47 (October 2006): 833-834.

"Making Waves makes some of its own and deserves a place on the reading lists of scholars interested in learning how modern Japan was forged and, in a very real sense, made modern."

- Michael Barnhart, Journal of Japanese Studies 33:1 (2007): 199-201.

"Making Waves... is meticulously researched, well written, and compelling throughout. Schencking puts to rest the notion that the Imperial Japanese Navy was passive and apolitical through an examination of many of the personalities and issues that lay at the root of this rivalry."

- Steven Bullard, Asian Studies Review 29 (December 2005): 427-428.

"Chapter five on the aftermath of the Battle of Tsushima... is almost worth the price of the book by itself... Schencking adds great historiographical weight to the efforts of historians to show that public support, or at least consent, for government policies was necessary even though Imperial Japan was hardly a democracy... Anyone interested in the politics of national security should put this book on their reading lists."

- Nicholas Sarantakes, Intelligence and National Security 21:4 (August 2006): 634-635.

"He bases his history on an impressive reading of Japanese and English-language primary and secondary sources to produce a story with political implications far beyond the history of one service. Schencking provides one of the best descriptions of the inner workings of the Japanese political system that I have ever read."

- S.C.M. Paine, Naval War College Review (Summer 2006): 155-156.

"Solidly grounded in Japanese-language sources, well organized, clearly written, and jargon-free, Making Waves should appeal to all readers interested in twentieth-century Japanese political and naval history."

- E. Bruce Reynolds, Japanese Studies 25:3 (December 2005): 301-302.