Review: Planning for Empire: Reform Bureaucrats and the Japanese Wartime State by Janis Mimura
Janis Mimura’s first monograph Planning Empire: Reform Bureaucrats and the Japanese Wartime State represents a welcome intervention in the English language historiography of Imperial Japan that provides a more nuanced interpretation of wartime and immediate post-war Japan.
Review: East Asia and the First World War by Frank Jacob
Robert Boucher Editor Review: East Asia and the First World War, by Frank Jacob At a glance “Overall, despite the flaws, East Asia and the First World War offers a decent introduction to the historiography of the period. As with any work of such a breadth, there will always be specialists nitpicks or room for […]
Review: Nation-Empire: Ideology and Rural Youth Mobilization in Japan and Its Colonies by Sayaka Chatani
Overall, Nation-Empire is a rare work which—like its material—is not confined to a geographical or temporal space but offers something for all scholars involving impressive transnational research.
Review: Japan: An Environmental History, by Conrad D. Totman
Totman argues that by interrogating the past it is possible to find such answers, where precedent of human interaction starting with the forger period illuminates just how critical and exponential the environmental impact of humans have been in the last 100 years or so utilizing Japan as a case study
Review: Crossing Empire’s Edge: Foreign Ministry Police and Japanese Expansionism in Northeast Asia, by Erik Esselstrom
“At its core, Crossing Empire’s Edge chronologically follows the development and expansion of these foreign police organs from their inception at the beginning of the 1900s to the end in 1945. In deliberately broad sketches, Esselstrom draws the reader’s attention to the extra-legal functions the consular police took on and their implications.”
Review: The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945, by Mark R. Peattie, et al.
The Battle for China takes direct aim at producing such a volume, born out of a conference of the leading scholars of military history related to Imperial Japan and the various groups of Nationalist and Communist Chinese. Each chapter focuses on aspects of the war answering both complex and basic questions while combining these views in parallel.
Review: Fifteen Lectures on Showa Japan: Road to the Pacifc War in Recent Historiography, edited by Tsutsui Kiyotada
As the title suggests, Fifteen Lectures on Showa Japan comprises a series of historiographic essays meant to bridge the gap between the current “fragmented and compartmentalized” state of scholarly literature and the broader “overall picture of this period called Showa” (ix).
Review: Grassroots Fascism: The War Experience of the Japanese People, by Yoshimi Yoshiaki
At its core Grassroots Fascism roughly collects various diaries, surveys, letters, and personal documents to build the so-sought after “bottom up” approach that has captivated historians since the post-colonial turn.
Review: Revolution Goes East: Imperial Japan and Soviet Communism, by Tatiana Linkhoeva
“Revolution goes East explores multiple threads across Linkhoeva’s six chapters providing snapshots of the intellectual and political debates that embroiled the Taisho democratic period without being tied to a specific narrative and showcases the chaotic fumbling and actualization contemporary politicians and theoreticians found themselves in.”
Review:China’s Trial by Fire: The Shanghai War of 1932, by Donald A. Jordan
Jordan sets out on an ambitious task to rewrite the narrative surrounding the “Shanghai Incident” which he astutely claims has been largely trivialized in the “accepted” waypoints of deteriorating Sino-Japanese relations. Building on his previous research that explored Chinese Anti-Japanese antagonisms and economic competition, Jordan aims to show that rather than a simple incident, the clash in 1932 constituted an outright war in all but name.