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This book describes how the states in post-1945 Austria, Germany, and Japan have tried to deal with the legacy of the Second World War and how their policies have affected their relations with other countries in the region. It focuses on the intersection of national interest and popular emotions and argues that it is possible to reconcile over historical issues, but that to do so can exact a considerable political cost.
After suffering crushing military defeats in 1945, both Japan and Germany have again achieved positions of economic dominance and political influence. Yet neither seeks to regain its former military power; on the contrary, antimilitarism has become so deeply rooted in the Japanese and German national psyches that even such questions as participation in international peacekeeping forces are met with widespread domestic opposition. In Cultures of Antimilitarism: National Security in Germany and Japan Thomas Berger analyzes the complex domestic and international political forces that brought about this unforeseen transformation.
How have shifts in both the international environment and domestic politics affected the trajectory of Japanese foreign policy? Does it still make sense to depict Japan as passive and reactive, or have the country's leaders become strategic and proactive? This book presents a nuanced picture of Japanese foreign policy, emphasizing the ways in which slow, adaptive changes, informed by pragmatic liberalism, have served the national interest.
In Dark Pasts, Jennifer M. Dixon asks why states deny past atrocities, and when and why they change the stories they tell about them. In recent decades, states have been called on to acknowledge and apologize for historic wrongs. Some have apologized, while others have silenced, denied, and relativized past crimes. Dark Pasts unravels the complex and fraught processes through which state narratives of past atrocities are constructed, contested, and defended. Focusing on Turkey's narrative of the Armenian Genocide and Japan's narrative of the Nanjing Massacre, Dixon shows that international pressures increase the likelihood of change in states' narratives of their own dark pasts, even as domestic considerations determine their content. Combining historical richness and analytical rigor, Dark Pasts is a revelatory study of the persistent presence of the past and the politics that shape narratives of state wrongdoing.
Suburban regular guy Earl Keese confronts the yawning pit of chaos in the persons of Harry and Ramona, a younger couple who have just moved into the only other house on their dead-end street. Literally overnight, Earl's painstakingly controlled world is turned upside down. Soon he is engaged in guerilla warfare with his new neighbors, who seem to threaten the very fabric of his carefully constructed reality.
This book is the first attempt to bridge the current divide between studies addressing "economic nationalism" as a deliberate ideology and movement of economic 'nation-building', and the literature concerned with more diffuse expressions of economic "nationness"—from national economic symbols and memories, to the "banal" world of product communication. The editors seeks to highlight the importance of economic issues for the study of nations and nationalism, and its findings point to the need to give economic phenomena a more prominent place in the field of nationalism studies. The authors of the essays come from disciplines as diverse as economic and cultural history, political science, bu...
A “splendid” and witty take on the Arthurian legend by the acclaimed author of Little Big Man (The New York Times Book Review). The myth of King Arthur has been told countless ways since the sixth century, always combining action, adventure, romance, and tragedy. In Arthur Rex, Thomas Berger updates the legend in irreverent fashion, forever changing King Arthur and his Round Table. In Berger’s medieval England, the damsel in distress is never what she appears to be. Merlin is a wizard of a completely different stripe. Classic heroes and villains are vividly reimagined, breathing fresh life into a familiar story. Powerful, emotional, and at times laugh-out-loud funny, Arthur Rex is an unforgettable tribute to one of the most celebrated tales of all time. This ebook features an all-new introduction by Thomas Berger, as well as an illustrated biography of the author including rare images and never-before-seen documents from his personal collection.
Germans remember the Nazi past so that it may never happen again. But how has the abstract vow to remember translated into concrete action to prevent new genocides abroad? As reports of mass killings in Bosnia spread in the middle of 1995, Germans faced a dilemma. Should the Federal Republic deploy its military to the Balkans to prevent a genocide, or would departing from postwar Germany’s pacifist tradition open the door to renewed militarism? In short, when Germans said “never again,” did they mean “never again Auschwitz” or “never again war”? Looking beyond solemn statements and well-meant monuments, Andrew I. Port examines how the Nazi past shaped German responses to the ge...
Groundbreaking study demonstrating how Japans leaders play an important role in diplomacy. A political leader is most often a nations most high-profile foreign policy figure, its chief diplomat. But how do individual leadership styles, personalities, perceptions, or beliefs shape diplomacy? In Japanese Diplomacy, the question of what role leadership plays in diplomacy is applied to Japan, a country where the individual is often viewed as being at the mercy of the group and where prime ministers have been largely thought of as reactive and weak. In challenging earlier, simplified ideas of Japanese political leadership, H. D. P. Envall argues that Japans leaders, from early Cold War figu...