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List of contents
Introduction: Overcoming Empire, Sherzod Muminov (University of East Anglia, UK)
1. Trapped between Imperial Ruins: Internment and Repatriation of the Taiwanese in Postwar Asia-Pacific, Shi-chi Mike Lan (National Chengchi University, Taiwan)
2. China's Refugees: Postwar 'Foreigners' and the Attempt at International Aid, 1945-1956, Meredith Oyen (University of Maryland, USA)
3. Early Narratives of Japan's Korean War, Samuel Perry (Brown University, USA)
4. Reconstructing Architectural Memories of the Japanese Empire in South Korea, Hyun Kyung Lee (Seoul National University, South Korea)
5. The Cinematic Reconstruction of East Asia in Postwar Japanese War Films, Dick Stegewerns (University of Oslo, Norway)
6. Anti-Imperialism as Strategy: Masking the Edges of Foreign Entanglements in Civil War-Era China, 1945-1948, Matthew D. Johnson (Taylor's University, Malaysia)
7. From the Ashes of Empire: The Reconstruction of Manchukuo's Enterprises and the Making of China's Northeastern Industrial Base, 1948-1952, Hirata Koji (University of Cambridge, UK)
8. Empires and Continuity: The Chinese Maritime Customs Service in East Asia, 1950-1955, Chihyun Chang (Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China)
9. Inverted Compensation: Wartime Forced Labor and Post-Imperial Reckoning, Yukiko Koga (Hunter College, USA)
10. Japan, Chemical Warfare and Okunoshima: A Postwar Overview, Arnaud Doglia (University of Geneva, Switzerland)
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Barak Kushner is Professor of East Asian History at the University of Cambridge, UK. He is the author of Men to Devils, Devils to Men: Japanese War Crimes and Chinese Justice (2015), Slurp! A Culinary and Social History of Ramen (2012), and The Thought War: Japanese Imperial Propoganda (2006). He is also the co-editor of Examining Japan's Lost Decades (co-edited with Funabashi Yoichi, 2015).Sherzod Muminov is Lecturer in Japanese History at the University of East Anglia, UK. He is the co-editor of Japan's Empire in East Asia (co-edited with Barak Kushner, 2017).
Summary
When Emperor Hirohito announced defeat in a radio broadcast on 15th August 1945, Japan was not merely a nation; it was a colossal empire stretching from the tip of Alaska to the fringes of Australia grown out of a colonial ideology that continued to pervade East Asian society for years after the end of the Second World War. In Overcoming Empire in Post-Imperial East Asia: Repatriation, Redress and Rebuilding, Barak Kushner and Sherzod Muminov bring together an international team of leading scholars to explore the post-imperial history of the region.
From international aid to postwar cinema to chemical warfare, these essays all focus on the aftermath of Japan’s aggressive warfare and the new international strategies which Japan, China, Taiwan, North and South Korea utilised following the end of the war and the collapse of Japan’s empire. The result is a nuanced analysis of the transformation of postwar national identities, colonial politics, and the reordering of society in East Asia. With its innovative comparative and transnational perspective, this book is essential reading for scholars of modern East Asian history, the cold war, and the history of decolonisation.
Foreword
An examination of the social, cultural, and political repercussions of the fall of Japan's empire and consequent reordering of East Asian society between the years 1945 and 1965.
Additional text
People in former Japanese colonies had little control over their futures, struggling for power, legitimacy, and compensation. The story of how people overcame the legacies of empire to rebuild their lives provides us with an alternative chronology for the 20th century and this exciting volume shows how the decade following Japan's empire helped shaped the history of our own time.
