The twelve essays in this volume underscore the similarities between Chinese and American approaches to bilateral diplomacy and between their perceptions of each other's policy-making motivations. Much of the literature on U.S.-China relations posits that each side was motivated either by ideologically informed interests or by ideological assumptions about its counterpart. But as these contributors emphasise, newly accessible archives suggest rather that both Beijing and Washington developed a responsive and tactically adaptable foreign policy. Each then adjusted this policy in response to...

This volume adopts an inclusive, pluralistic approach that stresses the complex relations among colonialism, modernity and nationalism.

Investigating the late 16th through the 19th century, this work looks at the shifting boundaries between the Choson state and the adherents of Confucianism, Buddhism, Christianity and popular religions.

In this ethnography of the everyday life of contemporary Korea, Denise Lett argues that South Korea's contemporary urban middle class not only exhibits upper-class characteristics but also that this reflects a culturally inherited disposition of Koreans to seek high status. This has combined with a favourable political and economic climate that has made it possible for many to achieve it. Lett shows how the Confucian legacy - especially the yangban tradition - has been a driving force behind the development of South Korea's new middle class and the country's rapid emergence as a global...

Based on primary documents and interviews, this text describes three rounds of responses to a tragic case of mercury poisoning, focusing on the efforts of its victims and their supporters to secure redress.

Since 1979 China's leaders have introduced economic and political reforms that have lessened the state's hold over the lives of ordinary citizens. By examining the growth in individual rights, the public sphere, democratic processes, and pluralisation, the author seeks to answer questions concerning the relevance of liberal democratic ideas for China and the relationship between a democratic political culture and a democratic political system. The author also looks at the contradictory impulses and negative consequences for democracy generated by economic liberalism. Unresolved issues...

In the first full-length English-language study of the monarchy in postwar Japan, Kenneth J. Ruoff examines not only its reform during the Occupation (1945-52), but also its evolution in the decades since the Japanese regained the power to shape their monarchy and polity. In order to understand the monarchy's function in contemporary Japan, the author analyzes the role of individual emperors in shaping the institution; interpretations of the emperor's new constitutional position as symbol; the emperor's intersection with politics; the issue of the emperor's and the nation's responsibility for...

Exploring the history of Japanese imperialism in Manchuria, from the acquisition of a railway concession following the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, to the founding of the puppet state of Manchoukuo in 1932, this text evolves the aims, strategies, and meanings of Japanese empire-building in northeast China.

Enka, a sentimental ballad genre, epitomizes for many the nihonjin no kokoro (heart/soul of Japanese), and to older members of the Japanese public this music evokes a direct connection to the traditional roots of Japaneseness.

By revealing the ways in which the state and communities dealt with the Great Depression in Japan, this study brings us closer to a comparative, grassroots perspective on how average men and women addressed some of modernity's fundamental questions.