Drawing on historiography of the Japanese occupation in the Chinese, Japanese, and English languages, this book examines the politics of the Manchukuo puppet state from the angle of notable Chinese who cooperated with the Japanese military and headed its government institutions. The war in Asia between 1931 and 1945, and particularly the early years of the conflict from 1931 to 1937, is a topic of world history that is often glossed over or misinterpreted. Much of the research and public opinion on this period in China, Japan, and the West deem these Chinese figures to be traitors, particles of Japanese colonialism, and collaborators under occupation. In contrast, this book highlights the importance of analyzing the national ideas of Manchukuo’s Chinese government leaders as a method of understanding Manchukuo’s operating mechanisms, Sino-Japanese interactions, and China’s turbulent history in the early twentieth century. Chinese Government Leaders in Manchukuo, 1931-1937 fills a gap in this research and is an ideal resource for scholars studying wartime Asia and Europe, as well as non-specialist readers who are interested in collaboration in general.

"Drawing on historiography of the Japanese occupation in the Chinese, Japanese, and English languages, this book examines the politics of the Manchukuo puppet state from the angle of notable Chinese who cooperated with the Japanese military and headed its government institutions. Chinese Government Leaders in Manchukuo, 1931-1937 fills a gap in this research and is an ideal resource for scholars studying wartime Asia and Europe, as well as non-specialist readers who are interested in collaboration in general"--

Writing Manchuria details the lives and translates a selection of fiction from one of the mid-twentieth century’s "four famous husband-wife writers" of China’s Northeast, who lived in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo: Li Zhengzhong (1921–2020) and Zhu Ti (1923–2012). The writings herein were published from the late 1930s to the mid-1940s, in Manchukuo, north China, and Japan; their writings appeared in the most prominent Japanese-owned, Chinese-language journals and newspapers. This volume includes materials that were censored or banned by the Manchukuo authorities: Li Zhengzhong’s "Temptation" and "Frost Flowers," and Zhu Ti’s "Cross the Bo Sea" and "Little Linzi and her Family." Li Zhengzhong has been characterized as "an angry youth" while Zhu Ti’s work questioned contemporary gender ideals and the subjugation of women. Their writings – those that were censored or banned and those published – shed important light on Japanese imperialism and the Chinese literature that was produced in different regions, reflecting both official support and suppression. Writing Manchuria is the first English-language translation of their writings, and it will appeal to those interested in Chinese wartime literature, as well as contribute to understandings of imperialism and the varied forms it took across Japan’s vast war-time empire.

Anarchic street performances in late-1950s Japan; inauguration of the first Happenings in Antwerp and charging of the "magic circle" in Amsterdam; Bauhaus Situationiste and anti-national art exchanges, networks and communes. As "Happener" and "Art Missionary," Yoshio Nakajima’s storied career traverses an astounding range of locations, scenes, movements, media, and performance modes in the global 1960s and 1970s in ways that challenge our notions of the possibilities of art. Nakajima repeatedly plays a role in jump-starting spaces of possibility, from Tokyo to Ubbeboda, from Spui Square and the Dutch Provos to Antwerp and Sweden. Despite this, Nakajima’s work has paradoxically been largely excluded from accounts where it might have justifiably featured. The present volume represents an international collaboration of researchers working to remedy this oversight. Nakajima’s work demands a reconceptualization of narratives of this art and politics and their specific interrelation to consider his exemplary nonconformity—and its exemplary exclusion. This history demonstrates the inadequacy of notions of specificity that would oppose an authentic local or national frame to an inauthentic transnational one. Conversely, Nakajima manifests a key dimension of the 1960s as a global event in the interrelation between eventfulness itself and the redrawing of categories of practice and understanding.

In 1944, the novel Xie (Crabs) by Mei Niang (1916-2013) was honored with the Japanese Empire’s highest literary award, Novel of the Year. Then, at the peak of her popularity, Mei Niang published in Japanese-owned, Chinese-language journals and newspapers in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo (1932-1945), Japan, and north China. Contemporaries lauded her writings, especially for introducing liberalism to Manchuria’s literary world. In Maoist China, however, Mei Niang was condemned as a traitor and a Rightist with her life and career torn to shreds until her formal vindication in the late 1970s. In 1997, Mei Niang was named one of "Modern China's 100 Writers." The collection that is translated in this volume, Xiaojie ji (Young lady’s collection), was published in 1936, when she was 19 years old. Long thought forever lost in the violence of China’s civil war and Maoist strife, the collection was only re-discovered in 2019. This is the first book-length, English-language translation of the work of this high-profile, prolific New Woman writer from Northeast China. Mei Niang’s Long-Lost First Writings will appeal to those interested in Chinese literature, the Japanese Empire, historic fiction, history, women’s/gender history, and students in undergraduate and graduate level courses. To date, English-language volumes of translated Chinese literature have rarely focused on Manchukuo’s Chinese writers or centered on those who left the puppet state by1935. This volume fills an important historical lacuna – a teenaged Chinese woman’s views of life and literature in Japanese-occupied Manchuria.

This book is a political and cultural history of the early postwar Japan aiming at exploring how the perception and cultural values of everyday life in the country changed along with the rise of the kasutori culture. Such a process was closely tied with both a refusal of the samurai culture and the interwar debate on modernity, and it resulted in a decadent way of life, exemplified by intellectuals such as Sakaguchi Ango. It depicts a short-lived radical cultural and social alternative, one that forced people to rethink their relationship to the kokutai, modernity, social roles, daily practices, and the production of knowledge. The subjectivity and daily practices in those years were more important in shaping the cultural identities of the Japanese than the new public ideology of the nation. This challenges some Euro-American historical notions that the new private sphere has emerged in Japan as an effect of the country’s Americanization, rather than from within it. This work not only looks at the immediate aftermath of WWII from the perspective of Japan, but also tries to rethink Westernization in the light of its global appropriation. This volume is addressed to specialists of Japanese or Asian history, but it will also attract historians of the United States and readers from political and intellectual history, cultural studies, and historiography in general.

A rich empirical account of China's foreign economic policy towards Japan after World War Two, drawing on hundreds of recently declassified Chinese sources. Amy King offers an innovative conceptual framework for the role of ideas in shaping foreign policy, and examines how China's Communist leaders conceived of Japan after the war. The book shows how Japan became China's most important economic partner in 1971, despite the recent history of war and the ongoing Cold War divide between the two countries. It explains that China's Communist leaders saw Japan as a symbol of a modern, industrialised nation, and Japanese goods, technology and expertise as crucial in strengthening China's economy and military. For China and Japan, the years between 1949 and 1971 were not simply a moment disrupted by the Cold War, but rather an important moment of non-Western modernisation stemming from the legacy of Japanese empire, industry and war in China.

This publication is the result of a three-year research project between eminent Russian and Japanese historians. It offers an an in-depth analysis of the history of relations between Russia and Japan from the 18th century until the present day. The format of the publication as a parallel history presents views and interpretations from Russian and Japanese perspectives that showcase the differences and the similarities in their joint history. The fourteen core sections, organized along chronological lines, provide assessments on the complex and sensitive issues of bilateral Russo-Japanese relations, including the territory problem as well as economic exchange.

Volume two of the acclaimed three-volume series on modern Japanese colonialism and imperialism This book brings together essays by leading experts on the history of Japan to examine the period from 1895 to 1937 when Japan’s economic, social, political, and military influence in China expanded so rapidly that it supplanted the influence of competing Western powers. They discuss how Japan’s informal empire emerged in China after Japan entered the Treaty Port system in 1895 and how it shaped Japan’s own internal development. How did Japan’s informal empire expand in size and importance so that Japanese economic and security interests became heavily dependent on China? What influence did Japanese business groups, China experts, and military have on their government’s China policy? How did the Japanese in China deal with the threatening rise of Chinese nationalism? Exploring these and other questions, these essays show how the pursuit of an informal empire in China played a profound role in the emergence of modern Japan. The contributors are Banno Junji, Barbara J. Brooks, Alvin D. Coox, Peter Duus, Albert Feuerwerker, Kitaoka Shin’ichi, Sophia Lee, Mizoguchi Toshiyuki, Ramon H. Myers, Nakagane Katsuji, Mark R. Peattie, Douglas R. Reynolds, and William D. Wray. This is the second volume of a series on modern Japanese colonialism and imperialism. Volume one is The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895–1945. Volume three is The Japanese Wartime Empire, 1931–1945.

This groundbreaking volume critically examines how writers in Japanese-occupied northeast China negotiated political and artistic freedom while engaging their craft amidst an increasing atmosphere of violent conflict and foreign control. The allegedly multiethnic utopian new state of Manchukuo (1932–1945) created by supporters of imperial Japan was intended to corral the creative energies of Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Russians, and Mongols. Yet, the twin poles of utopian promise and resistance to a contested state pulled these intellectuals into competing loyalties, selective engagement, or even exile and death—surpassing neat paradigms of collaboration or resistance. In a semicolony wrapped in the utopian vision of racial inclusion, their literary works articulating national ideals and even the norms of everyday life subtly reflected the complexities and contradictions of the era. Scholars from China, Korea, Japan, and North America investigate cultural production under imperial Japan’s occupation of Manchukuo. They reveal how literature and literary production more generally can serve as a penetrating lens into forgotten histories and the lives of ordinary people confronted with difficult political exigencies. Highlights of the text include transnational perspectives by leading researchers in the field and a memoir by one of Manchukuo’s last living writers. “This first-rate collection offers the most comprehensive overview of Manchukuo literature in any language. Containing an abundance of very original research and analysis, with relevant references to diverse sources in Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, and Russian, the essays will be welcomed by scholars dealing with literary, historical, political, and colonization issues in Manchukuo and its neighbors.” —Ronald Suleski, Suffolk University, Boston “Manchukuo Perspectives is an excellent contribution to the field. Manchukuo was a fascinating and fraught experiment. Colonialism, imperialism, modernism, and nationalism were just some of the many different forces at play there. With an impressive set of contributors bringing both breadth and depth to the study of these issues, this collection fills a void in our understanding of the cultural and literary production of Manchukuo wonderfully.” —James Carter, Saint Joseph’s University