Dramatic innovations in modern Japan include a mass army, overseas empire, and constitutional polity. This is the first book to link these changes in the Meiji era (1868-1912). It focuses on the life of General Katsura Taro, one of the architects of the modern military, a leading figure in Japanese colonialism, and prime minister through the 1900s. Challenging the received wisdom about Japanese militarism and imperialism, it exposes the army's ambivalence about empire but also its positive role in political change.
Dramatic innovations in modern Japan include a mass army, overseas empire, and constitutional polity. This is the first book to link these changes in ...
In this detailed account of civilian lives during wartime in Asia, high school students, undergrads, and general readers alike can get a glimpse into the often dismal, but surprisingly resilient, lives led by ordinary people-those who did not go off to war but were powerfully affected by it nonetheless. How did people live on a day-to-day basis with the cruelty and horror of war right outside their doorsteps? What were the reactions and views of those who did not fight on the fields? How did people come together to cope with the losses of loved ones and the sacrifices they had to make on a...
In this detailed account of civilian lives during wartime in Asia, high school students, undergrads, and general readers alike can get a glimpse in...
On the eve of the Pacific war (1941-45), there were 198,000 Japanese in Brazil, the largest expatriate body outside East Asia. Yet the origins of this community have been obscured. The English-language library is threadbare while Japanese scholars routinely insist that life outside of Japan was filled with shock and hardship so that, as one historian asserted, 'their bodies were in Brazil but their minds were always in Japan'. This study redraws the world of the overseas Japanese. Using the Japanese-language press of Brazil, it explains the development of a community with its own, often...
On the eve of the Pacific war (1941-45), there were 198,000 Japanese in Brazil, the largest expatriate body outside East Asia. Yet the origins of this...
This is the first ever English-language study of the war which established Japan's image as a warrior nation, an image which in many ways persists today. Using extensive Japanese materials, including the letters of frontline troops and provincial newspapers, it presents the diverse experience both of soldiers and civilians and reveals how war accelerated the modernization of Japanese society. Included are such topics as the soldiers' impressions of duty, nation, and their 'fellow' Asians; the role of the emperor as commander-in-chief; the use of the war in schools; as well as the activities...
This is the first ever English-language study of the war which established Japan's image as a warrior nation, an image which in many ways persists tod...
Dramatic innovations in modern Japan include a mass army, overseas empire, and constitutional polity. This is the first book to link these changes in the Meiji era (1868-1912). It focuses on the life of General Katsura Taro, one of the architects of the modern military, a leading figure in Japanese colonialism, and prime minister through the 1900s. Challenging the received wisdom about Japanese militarism and imperialism, it exposes the army's ambivalence about empire but also its positive role in political change.
Dramatic innovations in modern Japan include a mass army, overseas empire, and constitutional polity. This is the first book to link these changes in ...
In contrast to the enduring stereotype of a 'nation of samurai', this book uses provincial newspapers and local records to hear the voices of ordinary people living in imperial Japan through several decades of war and peace. These voices reveal the authentic experiences, opinions and emotions of men, women and children. They show that the impression of a uniquely disciplined, regimented, militaristic society, which took root in the Western imagination from the 1890s and which helped bring about the Pacific war of 1941-5, is a gross illusion.
Stewart Lone challenges the...
In contrast to the enduring stereotype of a 'nation of samurai', this book uses provincial newspapers and local records to hear the voices of ordin...
