List of honorees

• 1994 — Carter J. Eckert, Offspring of Empire, the Koch’ang and Kims and the Colonial Origins of Korean Capitalism, 1876–1945 (University of Washington Press, 1991)^[2]
• 1995 — Melinda Takeuchi, Taiga’s True Views: The Language of Landscape Painting in Eighteenth-Century Japan (Stanford University Press, 1993)^[2]
• 1996 — Richard J. Samuels, Rich Nation, Strong Army: National Security and the Technological Transformation of Japan (Cornell University Press, 1994)^[3]
• 1997 — John Whittier Treat, Writing Ground Zero: Japanese Literature and the Atomic Bomb (University of Chicago Press, 1995)^[4]
• 1998 — James Palais, Confucian Statecraft and Korean Institutions: Yu Hyongwon and the Late Choson Dynasty (University of Washington Press, 1996)^[5]
• 1999 — Susan B. Hanley, Everyday Things in Premodern Japan: The Hidden Legacy of Material Culture (University of California Press, 1997)^[6]
• 2000 — William M. Tsutsui, Manufacturing Ideology: Scientific Management in Twentieth-Century Japan (Princeton University Press, 1998)^[5]
• 2001 — Mark J. Hudson, Ruins of Identity: Ethnogenesis in the Japanese Islands (University of Hawaii Press, 1999)^[5]
• 2002 — Thomas LaMarre, Uncovering Heian Japan: An Archeology of Sensation and Inscription (Duke University Press, 2000)^[5]
• 2003 — E. Taylor Atkins, Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz in Japan (Duke University Press, 2001)^[5]
• 2004 — Andre Schmid, Korea Between Empires, 1895–1919 (Columbia University Press, 2002)^[7]
• 2005 — Jordan Sand, House and Home in Modern Japan: Architecture, Domestic Space, and Bourgeois Culture, 1880–1930 (Harvard University Asia Center, 2003).^[5]
• 2006 — Andrew M. Watsky, Chikubushima: Deploying the Sacred Arts in Momoyama Japan (University of Washington Press, 2004).^[8]
• 2007 — Eiko Ikegami, Bonds of Civility: Aesthetic Networks and the Political Origins of Japanese Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2005)^[5]
• 2008 — Karen Nakamura, Deaf in Japan: Signing and the Politics of Identity (Cornell University Press, 2006)^[9]
• 2009 — Ann Jannetta, The Vaccinators: Smallpox, Medical Knowledge, and the ‘Opening’ of Japan (Stanford University Press, 2007)^[10]
• 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)^[5]
• 2011 — Karen Thornber, Empire of Texts in Motion: Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese Transculturations of Japanese Literature (Harvard University Press, 2009)^[11]
• 2012 — Lori Meeks, Hokkeji and the Reemergence of Female Monastic Orders in Premodern Japan (University of Hawai'i Press, 2010)
• 2013 — Mary C. Brinton, Lost in Transition: Youth, Work and Instability in Postindustrial Japan (Cambridge University Press, 2011)
• 2014 — Yukio Lippit, Painting of the Realm: The Kano House of Painters in 17th-Century Japan (University of Washington Press, 2012)
• 2015 — Fabian Drixler, Mabiki: Infanticide and Population Growth in Eastern Japan, 1660-1950 (University of California Press, 2013)
• 2016 — Ran Zwigenberg, Hiroshima: The Origins of Global Memory Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2014)
• 2017 — Noriko Manabe, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Protest Music After Fukushima (Oxford University Press, 2015).^{[12] [13]}
• 2017 Honorable Mention— Federico Marcon, The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan (University of Chicago Press, 2015)
• 2018 — Satoko Shimazaki, Edo Kabuki in Transition: From the Worlds of the Samurai to the Vengeful Female Ghost(Columbia University Press, 2015)
• 2018 Honorable Mention— Yoshikuni Igarashi, Homecomings: The Belated Return of Japan’s Lost Soldiers (Columbia University Press, 2016)
• 2019 — Bryan D. Lowe, Ritualized Writing: Buddhist Practice and Scriptural Cultures in Ancient Japan (University of Hawai'i Press, 2017)
• 2020 — Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci, Contraceptive Diplomacy: Reproductive Politics and Imperial Ambitions in the United States and Japan (Stanford University Press, 2018)
• 2020 Honorable Mention — Maren A. Ehlers, Give and Take: Poverty and the Status Order in Early Modern Japan (Harvard University Press, 2018)
• 2021 — Benjamin Uchiyama, Japan's Carnival War: Mass Culture on the Home Front, 1937-1945 (Cambridge University Press, 2019)^[14]
• 2021 Honorable Mention — Kirsten L. Ziomek, Lost Histories: Recovering the Lives of Japan's Colonial Peoples (Harvard University Asia Center, 2019)^[14]
• 2022 — Gabriele Koch, Healing Labor: Japanese Sex Work in the Gendered Economy (Stanford University Press, 2020)
• 2022 Honorable Mention — Nozomi Naoi, Yumeji Modern: Designing the Everyday in Twentieth Century Japan (University of Washington Press, 2020)
• 2023 — Victor Seow, Carbon Technocracy: Energy Regimes in Modern East Asia (University of Chicago Press, 2021)^[15]
• 2023 Honorable Mention — Michael K. Bourdaghs, A Fictional Commons: Natsume Soseki and the Properties of Modern Literature (Duke University Press, 2021)^[15]
• 2023 Honorable Mention — Reginald Jackson, A Proximate Remove: Queering Intimacy and Loss in The Tale of Genji (University of California Press, 2021)^[15]
• 2024 — Sherzod Muminov, Eleven Winters of Discontent: The Siberian Internment and the Making of a New Japan (Harvard University Press)^[16]
• 2024 Honorable Mention — Morgan Pitelka, Reading Medieval Ruins: Urban Life and Destruction in Sixteenth-Century Japan (Cambridge University Press)^[16]