Using ceremonials such as imperial weddings and funerals as models, T. Fujitani illustrates what visual symbols and rituals reveal about monarchy, nationalism, city planning, discipline, gender, memory, and modernity. Focusing on the Meiji Period (1868-1912), Fujitani brings recent methods of cultural history to a study of modern Japanese nationalism for the first time.

Race for Empire offers a profound and challenging reinterpretation of nationalism, racism, and wartime mobilization during the Asia-Pacific war. In parallel case studies--of Japanese Americans mobilized to serve in the United States Army and of Koreans recruited or drafted into the Japanese military--T. Fujitani examines the U.S. and Japanese empires as they struggled to manage racialized populations while waging total war. Fujitani probes governmental policies and analyzes representations of these soldiers--on film, in literature, and in archival documents--to reveal how...