Ran Zwigenberg

My research focuses on modern Japanese and Jewish history, with a specialization in memory and cultural history. My first manuscript Hiroshima: The Origins of Global Memory Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2014), winner of the 2016 Association for Asian Studies’ John W. Hall book award, deals comparatively with the commemoration and the reaction to the Holocaust and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. A second manuscript, a collaborative research project with my UK colleague, Oleg Benesch, Japan’s Castles: Citadels of Modernity in War and Peace, was published by Cambridge in 2019. Japan’s Castles focuses on the modern history of Japanese castles in the context of the larger issues of reconstruction, national identity, and local memory.  My third manuscript, Nuclear Minds: Cold War Psychological Science the Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki  (Chicago, 2023), focuses on the way psychologists and psychiatrists reacted to Hiroshima and the Holocaust, the role those played in the peace movement and survivor politics, and the way such involvement, in turn, impacted the practice of medicine. A recent publication, with Mahon Murphy, Don’t be Swindled (Bloomsbury, 2025a ) is a history of punk music in Kyoto.  I have also published on atomic energy, military tourism, and the globalization of “total war” in the 20th century. I have currently ongoing projects on military heritage and the military history of Hiroshima, and, together with Zuzanna Dziuban, on the circulation of human remains and ashes from the death camps in Poland to memorials and museums in Japan, Israel, and globally.

Recent Publications:

Hiroshima: The Origins of Global Memory Culture, (Cambridge University Press, 2014)