You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
This reexamination of the controversial role Emperor Hirohito played during the Pacific War gives particular attention to the question: If the emperor could not stop Japan from going to war with the Allied Powers in 1941, why was he able to play a crucial role in ending the war in 1945? Drawing on previously unavailable primary sources, Noriko Kawamura traces Hirohito’s actions from the late 1920s to the end of the war, analyzing the role Hirohito played in Japan’s expansion. Emperor Hirohito emerges as a conflicted man who struggled throughout the war to deal with the undefined powers bestowed upon him as a monarch, often juggling the contradictory positions and irreconcilable differences advocated by his subordinates. Kawamura shows that he was by no means a pacifist, but neither did he favor the reckless wars advocated by Japan’s military leaders.
This study examines one aspect of American women's professionalization and the implications of the cross-cultural dialogue between American woman missionaries and Japanese students and supporters at Kobe College between 1873 and 1909.
This edited collection examines the effects of the Great War and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in East Asia. Contributors to this collection highlight how Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Mongolian groups and individuals actively sought to envision a global order in which the center of gravity lay in the Western Pacific, not the Northern Atlantic.
Japanese and American scholars explore new, multidisciplinary ways of thinking about peace and how to achieve it. Noriko Kawamura is associate professor of history at Washington State University. Yoichiro Murakami and Shin Chiba teach at the International Christian University in Tokyo.
Informed Western understanding of Imperial Japan still often conjures up images of militarism, blind devotion to leaders, and fanatical pride in the country. But, as Imperial Japan and Defeat in the Second World War reveals, Western imagination is often reductive in its explanation of the Japanese Empire and its collapse. In his analysis of the Emperor, Imperial Japanese Army and Navy during the Second World War, Peter Wetzler examines the disconnect between nation and state during wartime Japan and in doing so offers a much-needed nuanced and sensitive corrective to existing Western scholarship. Rooted in the perspective of the Japanese, Wetzler makes available to readers vital primary and secondary Japanese archival sources; most notably, this book provides the first English assessment of the recently-released Actual Record of the Showa Emperor. This book is an important advance in English-language studies of the Second World War in Asia, and is thus essential reading for all those wishing to understand this crucial period in Japanese history.
Although events in East Asia were a sideshow in the great drama of World War I, what happened there shattered the accord between Japan and the United States. This book pursues the two-fold question of how and why U.S.-Japanese tensions developed into antagonism during the war by inquiring into the historical sources of both sides. Kawamura explains this complex phenomenon by looking at various factors: conflicts of national interests—geopolitical and economic; perceptual problems such as miscommunication, miscalculation, and mistrust; and, most important of all, incompatible approaches to foreign policy. America's universalism and the unilateralism inherent in Wilsonian idealistic internat...
Religion is a driving force of the twenty-first century. Here is a book that discusses every aspect of this fascinating subject, proposing an agenda for future study. The authors are leading scholars from all over the world.
Nearly a century of Japanese Imperial rule, from the 1868 Meiji Restoration to the end of WWII, is explored in this sweeping history. Under Emperor Meiji’s rule, Imperial Japan established itself as a world power through rapid industrialization and militarization. Aligned with the Entente Powers during the First World War, Japan made a proposal for racial equality at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference—only to be overruled by American President Woodrow Wilson. In the 1920s, the empire began its military conquest of numerous countries and islands throughout Asia and the Pacific regions. Author Stephen Wynn examines Japan’s various military conflicts and colonial efforts, including its invasion of China that coincided with the Second World War. The book culminates with the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which finally brought about Japan’s surrender and the end of the war in Asia and the Pacific.
A moving tale of loss and reaching out to the ones we love. Our narrator’s days are numbered. Estranged from his family, living alone with only his cat Cabbage for company, he was unprepared for the doctor’s diagnosis that he has only months to live. But before he can set about tackling his bucket list, the Devil appears with a special offer: in exchange for making one thing in the world disappear, he can have one extra day of life. And so begins a very bizarre week . . . Because how do you decide what makes life worth living? In dealing with the Devil our narrator will take himself – and his beloved cat – to the brink. Genki Kawamura's If Cats Disappeared from the World is a story of loss and reconciliation, of one man’s journey to discover what really matters in modern life. This beautiful tale is translated from the Japanese by Eric Selland, who also translated The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide. 'If you're a fan of The Guest Cat (or even just cats generally), you'll love this.' – Sunday Times
"Some 55 scholars, mostly Japanese but with a considerable number from the US and Europe, write about the ethnicity, theories of origin, history, economies, art, religious beliefs, mythology, and other aspects of the culture of the Ainu, the indigenous people of Japan, now principally found in Hokkaido and smaller far northern islands. Hundreds of photographs and paintings, mostly in excellent quality color, show a wide variety of Ainu people, as well as clothing, jewelry, and various artifacts."--"Choice". "The most in-depth treatise available on Ainu prehistory, material culture, and ethnohistory." - "Library Journal".--Amazon.com (2001 ed, book description).