The Making of Japanese Manchuria, 1904–1932

Author: Yoshihisa Tak Matsusaka
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 1684173507
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 550

Book Description
"In this history of Japanese involvement in northeast China, the author argues that Japan’s military seizure of Manchuria in September 1931 was founded on three decades of infiltration of the area. This incremental empire-building and its effect on Japan are the focuses of this book. The principal agency in the piecemeal growth of Japanese colonization was the South Manchurian Railway Company, and by the mid-1920s Japan had a deeply entrenched presence in Manchuria and exercised a dominant economic and political influence over the area. Japanese colonial expansion in Manchuria also loomed large in Japanese politics, military policy, economic development, and foreign relations and deeply influenced many aspects of Japan’s interwar history."

Empire and Environment in the Making of Manchuria

Author: Norman Smith
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774832924
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 317

Book Description
Since the seventeenth century, Chinese, Japanese, Manchu, Russian, and other imperial forces have defied Manchuria’s unrelenting summers and unforgiving winters to fight for sovereignty over the natural resources of Northeast Asia. Until now, historians have focused on rivalries between the region’s imperial invaders. Empire and Environment in the Making of Manchuria examines the interplay of climate and competing economic and political interests in the region’s vibrant – and violent – cultural narrative. In this unique and compelling analysis of Manchuria’s environmental history, contributors demonstrate how geography shaped the region’s past. Families that settled this borderland reaped its riches while at the mercy of an unforgiving and hotly contested landscape. As China’s strength as a world leader continues to grow, this volume invites exploration of the indelible links between empire and environment – and shows how the geopolitical future of this global economic powerhouse is rooted in its past.

Japan's Total Empire

Author: Louise Young
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520923154
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 509

Book Description
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 History of Russo-Japanese Relations

Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004400850
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 659

Book Description
This publication is the result of a three-year research project between eminent Russian and Japanese historians. It offers an an in-depth analysis of the history of relations between Russia and Japan from the 18th century until the present day. The format of the publication as a parallel history presents views and interpretations from Russian and Japanese perspectives that showcase the differences and the similarities in their joint history. The fourteen core sections, organized along chronological lines, provide assessments on the complex and sensitive issues of bilateral Russo-Japanese relations, including the territory problem as well as economic exchange.

Japanese War Orphans in Manchuria

Author: M. Itoh
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230106366
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Book Description
Japanese war orphans in Manchuria are the forgotten victims of the Asia-Pacific War and Sino-Japanese relations, and this is an integral part of the Japanese government's 'postwar settlement' issues concerning its war responsibility and compensation.

The Oxford Handbook of European History, 1914-1945

Author: Nicholas Doumanis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199695660
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 673

Book Description
The period spanning the two World Wars was unquestionably the most catastrophic in Europe's history. Despite such undeniably progressive developments as the radical expansion of women's suffrage and rising health standards, the era was dominated by political violence and chronic instability. Its symbols were Verdun, Guernica, and Auschwitz. By the end of this dark period, tens of millions of Europeans had been killed and more still had been displaced and permanently traumatized. If the nineteenth century gave Europeans cause to regard the future with a sense of optimism, the early twentieth century had them anticipating the destruction of civilization. The fact that so many revolutions, regime changes, dictatorships, mass killings, and civil wars took place within such a compressed time frame suggests that Europe experienced a general crisis. The Oxford Handbook of European History, 1914-1945 reconsiders the most significant features of this calamitous age from a transnational perspective. It demonstrates the degree to which national experiences were intertwined with those of other nations, and how each crisis was implicated in wider regional, continental, and global developments. Readers will find innovative and stimulating chapters on various political, social, and economic subjects by some of the leading scholars working on modern European history today.

The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949

Author: S. C. M. Paine
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139560875
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 520

Book Description
The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949 shows that the Western treatment of World War II, the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War as separate events misrepresents their overlapping connections and causes. The Chinese Civil War precipitated a long regional war between China and Japan that went global in 1941 when the Chinese found themselves fighting a civil war within a regional war within an overarching global war. The global war that consumed Western attentions resulted from Japan's peripheral strategy to cut foreign aid to China by attacking Pearl Harbour and Western interests throughout the Pacific in 1941. S. C. M. Paine emphasizes the fears and ambitions of Japan, China and Russia, and the pivotal decisions that set them on a collision course in the 1920s and 1930s. The resulting wars together yielded a viscerally anti-Japanese and unified Communist China, the still-angry rising power of the early twenty-first century.

Taming China's Wilderness

Author: Patrick Fuliang Shan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317046838
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 343

Book Description
Until the beginning of the twentieth century, the Chinese province of Heilongjiang, historically known as Northern Manchuria, remained a sparsely populated territory on the northeastern frontier. For about two centuries, the rulers of the Qing dynasty (1644-1912) - whose historical homeland was in Manchuria - enforced a policy that prohibited Chinese immigration and settlement and maintained the region’s reputation as the Great Northern Wilderness. Yet, as this new study demonstrates, by the early 20th century the Chinese government reversed its previous policy and began to encourage immigration into Heilongjiang, turning a backwater into a thriving frontier region. Covering the period between the reversal of the anti-immigration policy around 1900 and the Japanese occupation of Heilongjiang in 1931, this book investigates this distinctive frontier and the impact upon it of the settlement of four million Chinese settlers during a thirty-one year period. Following an introduction providing a background to the period covered, the study is divided into five chapters. The first chapter looks at patterns of immigrations, settlement and the features of the newly developing frontier society. Chapter two then deals with land possession, tenure and relations amongst the newly arrived settlers. The third chapter discusses the transformation of the ethnic make-up of the region, and the move from a largely nomadic culture to one of settled farmers. Chapter four probes the social problems these changes caused, particularly banditry. The final chapter revises commonly held notions about Russian dominance of the region, arguing that Russia’s influence was limited to the railway zone. Taken together, these chapters not only provide an overview of a territory undergoing rapid and sustained change, but also provide insights into wider Chinese history, as well as adding to the on-going scholarly interest in border and frontier studies.

Curse on This Country

Author: Danny Orbach
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501708333
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 349

Book Description
Imperial Japanese soldiers were notorious for blindly following orders, and their enemies in the Pacific War derided them as "cattle to the slaughter." But, in fact, the Japanese Army had a long history as one of the most disobedient armies in the world. Officers repeatedly staged coups d'états, violent insurrections, and political assassinations; their associates defied orders given by both the government and the general staff, launched independent military operations against other countries, and in two notorious cases conspired to assassinate foreign leaders despite direct orders to the contrary.In Curse on This Country, Danny Orbach explains the culture of rebellion in the Japanese armed forces. It was a culture created by a series of seemingly innocent decisions, each reasonable in its own right, which led to a gradual weakening of Japanese government control over its army and navy. The consequences were dire, as the armed forces dragged the government into more and more of China across the 1930s—a culture of rebellion that made the Pacific War possible. Orbach argues that brazen defiance, rather than blind obedience, was the motive force of modern Japanese history.Curse on This Country follows a series of dramatic events: assassinations in the dark corners of Tokyo, the famous rebellion of Saigō Takamori, the "accidental" invasion of Taiwan, the Japanese ambassador’s plot to murder the queen of Korea, and the military-political crisis in which the Japanese prime minister "changed colors." Finally, through the sinister plots of the clandestine Cherry Blossom Society, we follow the deterioration of Japan into chaos, fascism, and world war.

Prelude to Pearl Harbor

Author: John Gripentrog
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538149443
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285

Book Description
In this absorbing account of the origins of the Asia-Pacific War, historian John Gripentrog argues that competing ideologies of world order—chiefly the rift between liberal internationalism and Pan-Asian regionalism—lay at the heart of the conflict. Drawing from a rich diversity of primary and secondary sources, the author also examines the Japanese government’s vigorous cultural diplomacy in the U.S., which sought to win over American hearts and minds and soft-pedal its imperialist ambitions in Asia. The result is a book that both challenges and amplifies standard interpretations of US-Japan relations in the interwar era, while weaving diplomatic, political, intellectual, and cultural history. Moreover, the author’s wide-angle lens offers readers insights into a fascinating assemblage of historical actors—from Japanese and American diplomats, politicians, and military leaders, to cosmopolitan art enthusiasts and major league baseball players.