The John Whitney Hall Book Prize has been awarded annually since 1994 by the Association for Asian Studies

Association for Asian Studies

The Association for Asian Studies is a U.S. society focused on facilitating contact and information exchange among scholars of Asian fields. It is the self-proclaimed largest society of its kind. The Association consists of eminent Asianists, and is a non-profit organization...

 (AAS). Pioneer Japanese studies scholar John Whitney Hall

John Whitney Hall

John Whitney Hall , the Tokyo-born son of missionaries in Japan, grew up to become a pioneer in the field of Japanese studies and one of the most respected historians of Japan of his generation. His life work was recognized by the Japanese government...

 is commemorated in the name of this prize.

The Hall Prize acknowledges an outstanding English language book published on Japan or Korea; and the prize honors the author of the book.

AAS prize

AAS is a scholarly, non-political, non-profit professional association open to all persons interested in Asia. The association was founded in 1941 as publisher of the Far Eastern Quarterly (now the Journal of Asian Studies). The organization has gone through a series of reorganizations since those early days; but its continuing function serves to further an exchange of information among scholars to increase understanding about East, South, and Southeast Asia.

The Northeast Asia Council (NEAC) of the AAS oversees the John Whitney Hall Book Prize.

Select list of honorees

• 1994 — Carter J. Eckert
  Carter Eckert
  Carter Eckert is an American academic, author and Yoon Se Young Professor of Korean History at Harvard University.-Selected works:In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about Carter Eckert, OCLC/WorldCat encompasses roughly 8 works in 10+ publications in 5 languages and 1,000+...
  
  , Offspring of Empire, the Koch’ang and Kims and the Colonial Origins of Korean Capitalism, 1876–1945 (University of Washington Press, 1991)
• 1995 — Melinda Takeuchi
  Melinda Takeuchi
  Melinda Takeuchi is an academic, an author, a Japanologist and a Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and the Department of Art History at Stanford University.-Early life:...
  
  , Taiga’s True Views: The Language of Landscape Painting in Eighteenth-Century Japan (Stanford University Press, 1993)
• 1996 — Richard J. Samuels
  Richard J. Samuels
  Richard J. Samuels is an American academic, political scientist, author, Japanologist, Ford Professor of Political Science and Director of Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.-Career:...
  
  , Rich Nation, Strong Army: National Security and the Technological Transformation of Japan (Cornell University Press, 1994)
• 1997 — John Whittier Treat
  John Whittier Treat
  John Whittier Treat is Professor of East Asian Languages and Literature at Yale University, Connecticut, United States, where he teaches Japanese literature and culture. He was co-editor of the Journal of Japanese Studies...
  
  , Writing Ground Zero: Japanese Literature and the Atomic Bomb (University of Chicago Press, 1995)
• 1998 — James Palais
  James Palais
  James B. Palais was an American academic, author and scholar of Korean history. He was Professor of Korean History at the University of Washington; and he was a key figure in establishing Korean Studies in the United States....
  
  , Confucian Statecraft and Korean Institutions: Yu Hyongwon and the Late Choson Dynasty (University of Washington Press, 1996)
• 1999 — Susan B. Hanley
  Susan Hanley
  Susan B. Hanley is an American academic, author, Japanologist and Professor Emerita of History at the University of Washington.-Career:Hanley was a Professor of Japanese Studies and History at the University of Washington...
  
  , Everyday Things in Premodern Japan: The Hidden Legacy of Material Culture (University of California Press, 1997)
• 2000 — William M. Tsutsui, Manufacturing Ideology: Scientific Management in Twentieth-Century Japan (Princeton University Press, 1998)
• 2001 — Mark J. Hudson
  Mark J. Hudson
  Mark James Hudson is a British academic and an anthropologist interested in multicultural Japan. As an archaeologist in Japan, his area of specialization are the Jomon period and the Yayoi period.-Early life:...
  
  , Ruins of Identity: Ethnogenesis in the Japanese Islands (University of Hawaii Press, 1999)
• 2002 — Thomas LaMarre
  Thomas LaMarre
  Thomas Mark LaMarre is a Canadian academic, author, Japanologist and member of the faculty of McGill University in Montreal.-Education:LaMarre was awarded a Bachelor's degree in Biology in 1981 at Georgetown University...
  
  , Uncovering Heian Japan: An Archeology of Sensation and Inscription (Duke University Press, 2000)
• 2003 — E. Taylor Atkins, Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz in Japan (Duke University Press, 2001)
• 2004 — Andre Schmid
  Andre Schmid (academic)
  Andre H. Schmid is a Canadian academic, author and Director of the Centre for the Study of Korea at the University of Toronto.-Career:Schmid is an assistant professor in Toronto's Department of East Asian Studies...
  
  , Korea Between Empires, 1895–1919 (Columbia University Press, 2002)
• 2005 — Jordan Sand, House and Home in Modern Japan: Architecture, Domestic Space, and Bourgeois Culture, 1880–1930 (Harvard University Asia Center, 2003).
• 2006 — Andrew M. Watsky
  Andrew Watsky
  Andrew Mark Watsky is an American academic, art historian, author and university professor.-Early life:Watsky was awarded his bachelor's degree from Oberlin College and his master's degree and doctorate from Princeton University....
  
  , Chikubushima: Deploying the Sacred Arts in Momoyama Japan (University of Washington Press, 2004).
• 2007 — Eiko Ikegami
  Eiko Ikegami
  is a Japanese academic, author and professor of Sociology at the New School of Social Research in New York.-Career:Ikegami is Chair and Professor of Sociology at the New School of Social Research in New York....
  
  , Bonds of Civility: Aesthetic Networks and the Political Origins of Japanese Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2005)
• 2008 — Karen Nakamura
  Karen Nakamura
  Karen Nakamura is an American academic, author, filmmaker, photographer and Associate Professor of Anthropology and East Asian Studies at Yale University.-Early life:...
  
  , Deaf in Japan: Signing and the Politics of Identity (Cornell University Press, 2006)
• 2009 — Ann Jannetta
  Ann Jannetta
  Ann Bowman Jannetta is an American academic, historian, author, Japanologist and Professor of History Emerita at the University of Pittsburgh.-Selected works:...
  
  , The Vaccinators: Smallpox, Medical Knowledge, and the ‘Opening’ of Japan (Stanford University Press, 2007)
• 2010 — Ken K. Ito, An Age of Melodrama: Family, Gender, and Social Hierarchy in the Turn-of-the Century Japanese Novel (Stanford University Press, 2008)
• 2011 — Karen Thornber, Empire of Texts in Motion: Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese Transculturations of Japanese Literature (Harvard University Press, 2009)