This work takes the reader from pre-modern times to the development of Japan within the Asia Pacific and the wider global political system. It considers the major issues in the study of modern Japan and the prospects for an increasingly integrated regional bloc in Pacific Asia.

This interdisciplinary book overviews political and cultural identity in the context of changes across the political landscape. These changes - from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the recent Islamic revival - have profoundly altered the received ideas that define political cultures throughout the world.

This text compares national pasts as well as the current processes of change taking place in Europe and East Asia, including the dynamics of the European Union in Europe and the re-emergence of the historical centre of China in East Asia.