Revised and Expanded Second Edition. This lively narrative tells the story of Japan's experience with imperialism and colonialism, looking first at Japan's responses to Western threats in the nineteenth century, then at Japan's activities as Asia's only imperialist power. Using a series of human vignettes as lenses, Japan and Imperialism examines the motivations--strategic, nationalist, economic--that led to imperial expansion and the impact expansion had on both national policies and personal lives. The work demonstrates that Japanese imperial policies fit fully into the era's worldwide imperialist framework, even as they displayed certain distinctive traits. Japanese expansive actions, the booklet argues, were inspired by concrete historical contingencies rather than by some national propensity or overarching design.

Studying the development, expansion, and eventual collapse of Japanese imperialism from the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-1895 through 1945, Beasley here discusses the dynamic relationship between a successful industrial economy and the building of an empire.

This extended monograph examines the work of the radical journalist Kotoku Shusui and Japan’s anti-imperialist movement of the early twentieth century. It includes the first English translation of Imperialism (Teikokushugi), Kotoku’s classic 1901 work. Kotoku Shusui was a Japanese socialist, anarchist, and critic of Japan’s imperial expansionism who was executed in 1911 for his alleged participation in a plot to kill the emperor. His Imperialism was one of the first systematic criticisms of imperialism published anywhere in the world. In this seminal text, Kotoku condemned global imperialism as the commandeering of politics by national elites and denounced patriotism and militarism as the principal causes of imperialism. In addition to translating Imperialism, Robert Tierney offers an in-depth study of Kotoku’s text and of the early anti-imperialist movement he led. Tierney places Kotoku’s book within the broader context of early twentieth-century debates on the nature and causes of imperialism. He also presents a detailed account of the different stages of the Japanese anti-imperialist movement. Monster of the Twentieth Century constitutes a major contribution to the intellectual history of modern Japan and to the comparative study of critiques of capitalism and colonialism.

The Oxford Handbook of the Ends of Empire offers the most comprehensive treatment of the causes, course, and consequences of the collapse of empires in the twentieth century. The volume's contributors convey the global reach of decolonization, analysing the ways in which European, Asian, and African empires disintegrated over the past century.

This important book, which many will regard as controversial, argues convincingly that the Japanese imperialism of the first half of the Twentieth Century was not a temporary aberration. The author looks at the detail of the great crisis of 1873 and shows that the prospect of economic gain through overseas expansion was the central issue of that year's political struggles. He goes on to show that Japan had a long, earlier history of aiming for economic expansion overseas; and that Japan's Twentieth Century imperialism grew out of this. In addition, he argues convincingly that much of the writing about Japan has played down the true extent and nature of Japanese imperialism.

Japan and the Specter of Imperialism examines competing Japanese responses to the late nineteenth century unequal treaty regime as a confrontation with liberal imperialism, including the culture and gender politics of US territorial expansion into the Pacific.

In this first social and cultural history of Japan's construction of Manchuria, Louise Young offers an incisive examination of the nature of Japanese imperialism. Focusing on the domestic impact of Japan's activities in Northeast China between 1931 and 1945, Young considers "metropolitan effects" of empire building: how people at home imagined and experienced the empire they called Manchukuo. Contrary to the conventional assumption that a few army officers and bureaucrats were responsible for Japan's overseas expansion, Young finds that a variety of organizations helped to mobilize popular support for Manchukuo—the mass media, the academy, chambers of commerce, women's organizations, youth groups, and agricultural cooperatives—leading to broad-based support among diverse groups of Japanese. As the empire was being built in China, Young shows, an imagined Manchukuo was emerging at home, constructed of visions of a defensive lifeline, a developing economy, and a settler's paradise.

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Placing Empire examines the spatial politics of Japanese imperialism through a study of Japanese travel and tourism to Korea, Manchuria, and Taiwan between the late nineteenth century and the early 1950s. In a departure from standard histories of Japan, this book shows how debates over the role of colonized lands reshaped the social and spatial imaginary of the modern Japanese nation and how, in turn, this sociospatial imaginary affected the ways in which colonial difference was conceptualized and enacted. The book thus illuminates how ideas of place became central to the production of new forms of colonial hierarchy as empires around the globe transitioned from an era of territorial acquisition to one of territorial maintenance.

Shows how Japanese anxiety about overpopulation was used to justify expansion, blurring lines between migration and settler colonialism. This title is also available as Open Access.

Employing a wide range of primary source materials, this book provides a colourful narrative of Japan's development since 1600. A variety of diary entries, letters, legal documents, and poems brings to life the early modern years, when Japan largely shut itself off from the outside world.