Dr. Janet Borland Wins First Book Prize (2020)
13 July, 2020
Dr. Janet Borland
One of the main aims of the Hong Kong Academy of the Humanities is to recognise and encourage early-career achievement among scholars of the humanities working in Hong Kong. It is for this reason that the Academy has instituted an annual prize for the best book by a humanities scholar in the early stages of his or her career.
The quality of this year’s submissions was extraordinarily high. After much deliberation, the Selection Committee agreed to offer the prize to Dr. Janet Borland, Assistant Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Hong Kong, for Earthquake Children: Building Resilience from the Ruins of Tokyo (Harvard University Asia Center, 2020). Dr Borland earned her PhD from the University of Melbourne and in 2018 received the University of Hong Kong Outstanding Teaching Award.
The Selection Committee found Earthquake Children to be an outstanding work of archival discovery, impeccably researched and striking a fine balance between academic and popular history. The book painstakingly assembles a mountain of material to show that the legendary preparedness of Japanese society did not come naturally, but began with policies implemented after the horrors inflicted by the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923, which killed more than 100,000 people.
Earthquake Children also adopts a pioneering methodology, focusing neither on great personages nor on political history. Instead, by producing a seminal work in the emerging field of ‘earthquake history’, it offers a paradigm-shifting analysis for children’s history as constituted through a notable seismic event. The book provides concrete evidence of how, in the months and years following the earthquake, Japanese children emerged as historical actors in their own right.
Dr Borland will also be awarded an Early Career Fellowship for five years and be invited to give a short speech at the Academy’s next social gathering.
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Learn more about Dr. Borland's work on her departmental page
Read about more about Earthquake Children: Building Resilience from the Ruins of Tokyo