"This handbook explores trauma in East Asia from the 19th to the 21st century, assessing how victims, perpetrators and societies have responded to such experiences and to what extent the legacies still resonate today. Mapping the trauma-scape of East Asia from an interdisciplinary perspective, including anthropologists, historians, film and literary critics, scholars of law, media and education, political scientists and sociologists, this book significantly enhances understandings of the region's traumatic pasts and how those memories have since been suppressed, exhumed, represented and disputed. In Asia's contested memory-scape there is much at stake for perpetrators, their victims and heirs to their respective traumas. The scholarly research in this volume examines the silencing and distortion of traumatic pasts and sustained efforts to interrogate denial and impunity in the search for accountability. Addressing collective traumas from across East Asia (China, Hong Kong, Japan, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam) this book is a valuable resource for students and scholars of Trauma and Memory Studies, Asian Studies and Contemporary Asian History more broadly"--

This handbook provides a comprehensive analysis of the dynamics and prospects of democratization in East Asia. A team of leading experts in the field offers discussion at both the country and regional level, including analysis of democratic attitudes and movements in China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Evaluating all the key components of regime evolution, from citizen politics to democratic institutions, the sections covered include: • Regional Trends and Country Overviews • Institutions, Elections, and Political Parties • Democratic Citizenship • Democratic Governance • The Political Economy of Democratization Examining the challenges that East Asian emerging democracies still face today, as well as the prospects of the region's authoritarian regimes, the Routledge Handbook of Democratization in East Asia will be useful for students and scholars of East Asian Politics, Comparative Politics, and Asian Studies.

Decades after the end of the World War II East Asia continues to struggle with lingering animosities and unresolved historical grievances in domestic, bilateral and regional memory landscapes. China, Japan and the Korea share a history of inter- and intra-violence, self-other identity construction and diametrically opposed interpretations of the past. Routledge Handbook of Memory and Reconciliation in East Asia offers a complete overview of the challenges of national memory and ideological rivalry for reconciliation in the East Asian region. Chapters provide authoritative analyses of contentious issues such as comfort women, the Nanjing massacre, history textbook controversies, shared heritage sites, colonial rule, territorial disputes and restitution. By interweaving memory, human rights and reconciliation the contributors actively explore real prospects of redressing past wrongs and achieving peaceful coexistence at personal as well as governmental levels. Bringing together an international team of experts, this book is an essential read for students and scholars of East Asian studies, anthropology, gender studies, history, international relations, law, political science, and sociology, and for those interested in memory and reconciliation issues.

During World War II, the Japanese military extended Japan’s civilian licensing regime for domestic brothels to those next to its overseas bases. It did so for a simple reason: to impose the strenuous health standards necessary to control the venereal disease that had debilitated its troops in earlier wars. In turn, these brothels (dubbed "comfort stations") recruited prostitutes through variations on the standard indenture contracts used by licensed brothels in both Korea and Japan. The party line in Western academia, though, is that these “comfort women” were dragooned into sex slavery at bayonet point by Japanese infantry. But, as the authors of this book show, that narrative originated as a hoax perpetrated by a Japanese communist writer in the 1980s. It was then spread by a South Korean organization with close ties to the Communist North. Ramseyer and Morgan discuss how these women really came to be in Japanese military comfort stations. Some took the jobs because they were tricked by fraudulent recruiters. Some were under pressure from abusive parents. But the rest of the women seem to have been driven by the same motivation as most prostitutes throughout history: want of money. Indeed, the notion that these “comfort women” became prostitutes by any other means has no basis in documentary history. Serious intellectuals of all political perspectives in both South Korea and Japan have understood this for years. Ramseyer and Morgan’s findings caused a firestorm in Japanese Studies academia. For explaining that the women became prostitutes of their own volition, both authors of this book found themselves “cancelled.” In this book, the authors detail both the history of the comfort women and their own persecution by academic peers. Only in the West—and only through brutal stratagems of censorship and ostracism—has the myth of bayonet-point conscription survived.

This book explores civil societies with distinct characteristics in Asian countries and regions to redefine the dynamic and interconnected formation that is Asia. This book documents how civil society organizations, such as charities and foundations, across Asia which have traditionally been observed to imitate or borrow the methods employed by Western nongovernmental organizations, have been developing distinctive relations with the state, inventing novel civic techniques. Furthermore, it highlights how such organizations have created a characteristic framework for governance and spaces for new social practices and reflections. Reflecting on the historical backgrounds, political systems, and cultural settings, each case study reveals the diverse and alternative approaches and solutions to various issues facing contemporary Asian society. Studying the dynamism of Asia to highlight the emergence of new civil society practices this book will be a great interest to scholars and students of Asian Studies, Anthropology, Sociology & Political Science.

The Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese Literature provides a comprehensive overview of how we study Japanese literature today. Rather than taking a purely chronological approach to the content, the chapters survey the state of the field through a number of pressing issues and themes, examining the ways in which it is possible to read modern Japanese literature and situate it in relation to critical theory. The Handbook examines various modes of literary production (such as fiction, poetry, and critical essays) as distinct forms of expression that nonetheless are closely interrelated. Attention is drawn to the idea of the bunjin as a ‘person of letters’ and a more realistic assessment is provided of how writers have engaged with ideas – not labelled a ‘novelist’ or ‘poet’, but a ‘writer’ who may at one time or another choose to write in various forms. The book provides an overview of major authors and genres by situating them within broader themes that have defined the way writers have produced literature in modern Japan, as well as how those works have been read and understood by different readers in different time periods. The Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese Literature draws from an international array of established experts in the field as well as promising young researchers. It represents a wide variety of critical approaches, giving the study a broad range of perspectives. This handbook will be of interest to students and scholars of Asian Studies, Literature, Sociology, Critical Theory, and History.

Making Mental Health: A Critical History historicises mental health by examining the concept from the ‘madness’ of the late nineteenth century to the changing ideas about its contemporary concerns and status. It argues that a critical approach to the history of psychiatry and mental health shows them to constitute a dual clinical-political project that gathered pace over the course of the twentieth century and continues to resonate in the present. Drawing on scholarship across several areas of historical inquiry as well as historical and contemporary clinical literature, the book uses a thematic approach to highlight decisive moments that demonstrate the stakes of this engagement in Anglo-American contexts. By tracing the (unfinished) history of institutions, the search for cures for psychiatric distress, the growing interest of the nation-state in mental health, the history of attempts to globalise psychiatry, the controversies over the politics of diagnostic categories that erupted in the 1960s and 1970s, and the history of theorising about the relationship between the psyche and the market, the book offers a comprehensive account of the evolution of mental health into a commonplace concern. Addressing key questions in the fields of history, medical humanities, and the social sciences, as well as in the psychiatry disciplines themselves, the book is an essential contribution to an ongoing conversation about mental distress and its meanings.

The Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese History is a concise overview of modern Japanese history from the middle of the nineteenth century until the end of the twentieth century. Written by a group of international historians, each an authority in his or her field, the book covers modern Japanese history in an accessible yet comprehensive manner. The subjects featured in the book range from the development of the political system and matters of international relations, to social and economic history and gender issues, to post-war discussions about modern Japan’s historical trajectory and its wartime past. Divided into thematic parts, the sections include: Nation, empire and borders Ideologies and the political system Economy and society Historical legacies and memory Each chapter outlines important historiographical debates and controversies, summarizes the latest developments in the field, and identifies research topics that have not yet received sufficient scholarly attention. As such, the book will be useful to students and scholars of Japanese history, Asian history and Asian Studies.

The Routledge Handbook of Southeast Asian Economics offers new insights into the rapidly-developing economies of Southeast Asia. Despite widespread initial deprivation, Southeast Asia has achieved and sustained a remarkable rate of growth, in the course of which tens of millions have successfully escaped severe poverty. Though the economies of the region vary in many dimensions, integration into the wider East Asian network of production and trade is a notable common feature, one that continues a centuries-long history of engagement with global trade. A second striking feature is the pace and extent of transformation in the structure of production and in sources of household income in the region, which has undergone remarkably rapid industrialization and urban growth. However, the search for sustained and sustainable growth through and beyond middle-income continues to confront pressing economic and policy challenges. This Handbook offers a timely and comprehensive overview of Southeast Asian economic development. Organized according to the logic of chronological and thematic unity, it is structured in these sections: Growth and development over the long term Food, agriculture and natural resources Trade, investment and industrialization Population, labor, and human capital Poverty and political economy Twenty-first century challenges This original Handbook, written by experts in their fields, is unique in the breadth and depth of its coverage. Its forward-looking perspective renders it relevant both now and in the future. This advanced level reference work will be essential reading for students, researchers and scholars of Asian Studies, Economics and Southeast Asian studies.

Drawing on cultural trauma theory, this book investigates how collective memory of the Nanjing Massacre is fashioned in China and how the mass media, political power and public praxis jointly shape the politics and culture of memory in contemporary China. Allowing for the dimensions of history and different mediating spaces, the authors first conduct textual analysis of news reports from traditional media since the event took place, revealing that the significance of the Massacre was initially portrayed as a local incident before its construction as a national trauma and finally a collective memory. In a study of physical and online memorial spaces, including the Memorial Hall, commemorative activities on the Internet and new media platforms, the book unveils the production and reproduction of trauma narratives as well as how these narratives have been challenged. The final part further studies the interactions between media and other institutional settings while exploring issues of global memory and reconciliation in East Asia. The title will be an essential read for anyone interested in memory studies, media and communication, and particularly the collective memory of the Nanjing Massacre.