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This second volume in a two-volume set provides the only comprehensive, Western-language history of Pan-Asianism through primary sources and commentaries. The book argues that Pan-Asianism, often—though unfairly—associated with the Yellow Peril, has been a powerful political and ideological force in modern Asia. It has shaped national identities and strongly influenced the development of international relations across Asia and the Pacific. Scholars have long recognized the importance of Pan-Asianism as an ideal of Asian solidarity, regional cooperation, and integration but also as an ideology that justified imperialist expansion and military aggression. Yet sustained research has been ha...
In his pioneering study, Men in Metal, Sven Saaler examines Japanese public statuary as a central site of historical memory from its beginnings in the Meiji period through the twenty-first century. Saaler shows how the elites of the modern Japanese nation-state went about constructing an iconography of national heroes to serve their agenda of instilling national (and nationalist) thinking into the masses. Based on a wide range of hitherto untapped primary sources, Saaler combines data-driven quantitative analysis and in-depth case studies to identify the categories and historical figures that dominated public space. Men in Metal also explores the agents behind this visualized form of the politics of memory and introduces historiographical controversies surrounding statue-building in modern Japan.
Regionalism has played an increasingly important role in the changing international relations of East Asia in recent decades, with early signs of integration and growing regional cooperation. This in-depth volume analyzes various historical approaches to the construction of a regional order and a regional identity in East Asia. It explores the ideology of Pan-Asianism as a predecessor of contemporary Asian regionalism, which served as the basis for efforts at regional integration in East Asia, but also as a tool for legitimizing Japanese colonial rule. This mobilization of the Asian peoples occurred through a collective regional identity established from cohesive cultural factors such as lan...
Due to their symbolic and iconographic meanings, expressions of ‘collective memory’ constitute the mental topography of a society and make a powerful contribution to its cultural, political and social identity. In Japan, the subject of ‘memory’ has prompted a huge response in recent years. Indeed, it has been and continues to be debated at many levels of Japan’s political, social, economic and cultural life. For the historian and social scientist the opportunity to access recorded memories is invariably welcomed as a valuable building block in research and a determinant in establishing balance and perspective. This volume brings together a selection of the most significant research on memory relating to modern Japan. Thematically structured (Politics and International Relations; Memorials, Museums, National Heroes; Popular and Intellectual Representations of Memory; Realms of Memory: Centre and Periphery) the subjects treated include the Nanjing massacre, comfort women, the fate of war monuments, the political use of national memory in post-war Japan and remembering the atomic bomb.
The Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese History is a concise overview of modern Japanese history from the middle of the nineteenth century until the end of the twentieth century. Written by a group of international historians, each an authority in his or her field, the book covers modern Japanese history in an accessible yet comprehensive manner. The subjects featured in the book range from the development of the political system and matters of international relations, to social and economic history and gender issues, to post-war discussions about modern Japan’s historical trajectory and its wartime past. Divided into thematic parts, the sections include: Nation, empire and borders Ideologies and the political system Economy and society Historical legacies and memory Each chapter outlines important historiographical debates and controversies, summarizes the latest developments in the field, and identifies research topics that have not yet received sufficient scholarly attention. As such, the book will be useful to students and scholars of Japanese history, Asian history and Asian Studies.
Pan-Asianism has been an ideal of Asian solidarity, regional cooperation, and regional integration but also served to justify expansionism and aggression. As such, it has been a decisive factor in the history of Asia and the Pacific region. This groundbreaking collection brings seminal documents on Pan-Asianism to the Western reader for the first time. It includes some fifty primary sources from 1850 to 1920.
For decades, historians and societal forces have campaigned for rapprochement, reconciliation and dialogue between East Asian nations. This book is a result of these efforts. Debates regarding the interpretation of the modern history of East Asia continue to affect bilateral relations between the states of the region. History education has become a particularly controversial issue in this context. This book’s main message is that a common understanding regarding the history of East Asia is possible, even though some differences remain. It is not only a major contribution to reconciliation in the region, but as the first textbook on the history of East Asia written collaboratively by scholars from three East Asian countries, it is also highly recommended for use in an anglophone teaching environment. The authors are a group of historians, teachers and concerned citizens from China, Japan and South Korea.
This book examines how Asianism became a key concept in mainstream political discourse between China and Japan and how it was used both domestically and internationally in the contest for political hegemony. It argues that, from the early 1910s to the early 1930s, this contest changed Chinese and Japanese perceptions of ‘Asia’, from a concept that was foreign-referential, foreign-imposed, peripheral, and mostly negative and denied (in Japan) or largely ignored (in China) to one that was self-referential, self-defined, central, and widely affirmed and embraced. As an ism, Asianism elevated ‘Asia’ as a geographical concept with culturalist-racialist implications to the status of a full...
This volume explores the political and social backgrounds of the ongoing history textbook controversy in Japan. In chapter 1, the resurgence since the 1990s of the conservative interpretation of history known as historical revisionism, which aims to support history education in schools that serves the strengthening of national pride, is identified as the major reason for the renewed debate. The remainder of the chapter traces the diverse connections of historical revisionism with Japanese domestic politics. Chapter 2 demonstrates that, as a consequence of this strong connection between revisionism and politics, the views of Japan's recent history underlying the "culture of memory" as it is m...