To form a truer portrait of Northeast Asian perspectives on modernity, this book presents a broad range of analyses from philosophical and political-philosophical scholars specializing in the region. The book considers the encounter between "Western" modernity and "Eastern" tradition not as a simple clash of cultures, but as a generative and hybridizing process of negotiation. It examines the concrete manifestations of modernity in various intellectual and political movements that attempted to radically restructure Northeast Asian societies. And through these situated perspectives, it rethinks and redefines the idea of "modernity" itself, challenging and presenting alternatives to Western-centric thinking on the topic. This book will be of particular interest to political philosophers, political theorists, comparative philosophers, regional specialists in East Asia, and all scholars grappling with the perplexities of global "modernity."

Following Barrington Moore Jr., this book raises doubts about modernization theory’s claim that an advanced economy with extensive social differentiation is incompatible with authoritarian rule. Authoritarian modernism in East Asia (Northeast and Southeast Asia) has been characterized by economically reformist but politically conservative leaders who have attempted to learn the “secrets” of authoritarian rule in modern society. They demobilize civil society while endeavoring to establish an “ethical” form of rule and claim reactionary culturalist legitimation. With China, East Asia is home to the most important country in the world today that is rapidly modernizing while attempting to remain authoritarian.

In this powerful and provocative book, Prasenjit Duara uses the case of Manchukuo, the Japanese puppet state in northeast China from 1932-1945, to explore how such antinomies as imperialism and nationalism, modernity and tradition, and governmentality and exploitation interacted in the post-World War I period. His study of Manchukuo, which had a population of 40 million and was three times the area of Japan, catalyzes a broader understanding of new global trends that characterized much of the twentieth century. Asking why Manchukuo so desperately sought to appear sovereign, Duara examines the cultural and political resources it mobilized to make claims of sovereignty. He argues that Manchukuo, as a transparently constructed 'nation-state,' offers a unique historical laboratory for examining the utilization and transformation of circulating global forces mediated by the 'East Asian modern.' Sovereignty and AUthenticity not only shows how Manchukuo drew technologies of modern nationbuilding from China and Japan, but it provides a window into how some of these techniques and processes were obscured or naturalized in the more successful East Asian nation-states. With its sweepingly original theoretical and comparative perspectives on nationalism and imperialism, this book will be essential reading for all those interested in contemporary history.

The period spanning the 1880s to 1945 was a crucially important formative time for Korea, during which understandings of modernity were largely shaped by the images of Korea’s neighbours to the east, west and north. China, Japan and Russia represented at some moments modern threats, but also denoted a range of alternative modernity possibilities, and ultimately provided a model for Korea’s pre-colonial and colonial modernity. This book explores the way in which modern Korea perceived its geographic neighbours from the 1890s until 1945. It shows that Korea's modern nationalism was at the same time internationalist in its orientation, as the vision of Korea’s ideal place in the world and brighter national future was often linked to the examples (positive and negative), threats (perceived and real) and allies abroad. Exploring the importance of the international knowledge and experience for the formation of the Korean nationalist paradigms, it offers nuance to the existing picture of the international connections and environment of the Korean national movements. It shows that the picture of Japan inside the anti-Japanese independence movement of the colonial period was more complicated than simple hatred of the invaders: modern achievements of Japan were admired even by anti-colonial nationalists as a possible model for Korea. The book also demonstrates the extent to which Chinese and Soviet revolutions influenced the thinking of modern Korean intellectuals across the whole ideological spectrum. Introducing new sources presented in English for the first time, and including themes such as race and ethnicity, global revolution, and gender, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Korean, East Asian and Russian history, as well as historians of the colonial/modern era more generally.

"The contentious relationship between modernism and realism has powerfully influenced literary history throughout the twentieth century and into the present. In 1930s Korea, at a formative moment in these debates, a “crisis of representation” stemming from the loss of faith in language as a vehicle of meaningful reference to the world became a central concern of literary modernists as they operated under Japanese colonial rule. Christopher P. Hanscom examines the critical and literary production of three prose authors central to 1930s literary circles—Pak T’aewon, Kim Yujong, and Yi T’aejun—whose works confront this crisis by critiquing the concept of transparent or “empiricist” language that formed the basis for both a nationalist literary movement and the legitimizing discourse of assimilatory colonization. Bridging literary and colonial studies, this re-reading of modernist fiction within the imperial context illuminates links between literary practice and colonial discourse and questions anew the relationship between aesthetics and politics. The Real Modern challenges Eurocentric and nativist perspectives on the derivative particularity of non-Western literatures, opens global modernist studies to the similarities and differences of the colonial Korean case, and argues for decolonization of the ways in which non-Western literatures are read in both local and global contexts."

This book analyzes the reception of Leo Strauss and his political philosophy in Northeast Asia. By juxtaposing the central idea of Strauss's political philosophy with the question of modernity, the contributors explore the eclectic adaptations of Strauss in Northeast Asian countries as a philosophical appropriation across cultures. Examining how Strauss's philosophy was first introduced in Northeast Asia, the book sheds light on the similarities and differences in experiences, challenging the dominant approach which attributes various receptions of Strauss in Northeast Asia solely to sociopolitical circumstances. This book also seeks to move beyond a China-centric approach to investigate the possible transcultural appeals of Strauss's political philosophy by exploring the cases of Japan and South Korea. Appealing to a wide network of scholars and practitioners in East Asia engaged in rethinking cultural particularities, this volume will be attractive to upper-level undergraduate students, graduate students, and advanced researchers in political philosophy, political theory, and Asian politics.

Until the late nineteenth century, the Chinese-Korean Tumen River border was one of the oldest, and perhaps most stable, state boundaries in the world. Spurred by severe food scarcity following a succession of natural disasters, from the 1860s, countless Korean refugees crossed the Tumen River border into Qing-China's Manchuria, triggering a decades-long territorial dispute between China, Korea, and Japan. This major new study of a multilateral and multiethnic frontier highlights the competing state- and nation-building projects in the fraught period that witnessed the Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War, and the First World War. The power-plays over land and people simultaneously promoted China's frontier-building endeavours, motivated Korea's nationalist imagination, and stimulated Japan's colonialist enterprise, setting East Asia on an intricate trajectory from the late-imperial to a situation that, Song argues, we call modern.

Colonial modernity and the conundrum of representation -- Translating Korean literature -- A minor writer -- Into the light -- Colonial abject -- Performing colonial kitsch -- Overhearing transcolonial roundtables -- Turning local -- Forgetting Manchurian memories -- Paradox of postcoloniality.

Modern East Asia details the history of the region while recognizing the intellectual, religious, artistic, economic and scientific contributions East Asians have made to the contemporary world. The three national narratives of China, Japan and Korea are told separately within each chapter, and the text emphasizes connections among them as well as the unique evolution of each society, allowing readers to experience the individual countries' histories as well as the region's history as a whole. The text takes into consideration the radical changes in the field of history in the past 40 years, as the authors have incorporated scholarship in areas such as gender studies, social history and minority histories. While reading social, economic and personal histories, students will uncover the evolution of family structures, peripheral and outcast communities, the sociopolitical power of language and literature, the rise of nationalism and regional trading networks. Attention is also paid to environmental and diplomatic themes.

Manchuria entered the twentieth century as a neglected backwater of the dying Qing dynasty, and within a few short years became the focus of intense international rivalry to control its resources and shape its people. This book examines the place of religion in the development of Manchuria from the late nineteenth century to the collapse of the Japanese Empire in 1945. Religion was at the forefront in this period of intense competition, not just between armies but also among different models of legal, commercial, social and spiritual development, each of which imagining a very specific role for religion in the new society. Debates over religion in Manchuria extended far beyond the region, and shaped the personality of religion that we see today. This book is an ambitious contribution to the field of Asian history and to the understanding of the global meaning and practice of the role of religion.