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Author: Stewart Lone
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135212112
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 365
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Book Description
In contrast to the enduring stereotype of a ‘nation of samurai’, this book uses provincial newspapers and local records to hear the voices of ordinary people living in imperial Japan through several decades of war and peace. These voices reveal the authentic experiences, opinions and emotions of men, women and children. They show that the impression of a uniquely disciplined, regimented, militaristic society, which took root in the Western imagination from the 1890s and which helped bring about the Pacific war of 1941-5, is a gross illusion. Stewart Lone challenges the long-standing view of prewar Japan as a ‘militaristic’ society. Instead of relying on the usual accounts about senior commanders and politics at the heart of government, he shows the realities of provincial society’s relations with the military in Japan at ground level. Working from the perspective of civil society and both rural and urban life in the provinces, Lone investigates broader civil contacts with the military including schools, local businesses, leisure and entertainment, civic ceremonies and monuments, as well as public attitudes towards the military and its values. This book will be of interest to upper undergraduates, postgraduates and academics interested in military history and Japanese history.
Author: Stewart Lone
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135212112
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 365
Get Book Here
Book Description
In contrast to the enduring stereotype of a ‘nation of samurai’, this book uses provincial newspapers and local records to hear the voices of ordinary people living in imperial Japan through several decades of war and peace. These voices reveal the authentic experiences, opinions and emotions of men, women and children. They show that the impression of a uniquely disciplined, regimented, militaristic society, which took root in the Western imagination from the 1890s and which helped bring about the Pacific war of 1941-5, is a gross illusion. Stewart Lone challenges the long-standing view of prewar Japan as a ‘militaristic’ society. Instead of relying on the usual accounts about senior commanders and politics at the heart of government, he shows the realities of provincial society’s relations with the military in Japan at ground level. Working from the perspective of civil society and both rural and urban life in the provinces, Lone investigates broader civil contacts with the military including schools, local businesses, leisure and entertainment, civic ceremonies and monuments, as well as public attitudes towards the military and its values. This book will be of interest to upper undergraduates, postgraduates and academics interested in military history and Japanese history.
Author: Edward J. Drea
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700622349
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344
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Book Description
Popular impressions of the imperial Japanese army still promote images of suicidal banzai charges and fanatical leaders blindly devoted to their emperor. Edward Drea looks well past those stereotypes to unfold the more complex story of how that army came to power and extended its influence at home and abroad to become one of the world's dominant fighting forces. This first comprehensive English-language history of the Japanese army traces its origins, evolution, and impact as an engine of the country's regional and global ambitions and as a catalyst for the militarization of the Japanese homeland from mid-nineteenth-century incursions through the end of World War II. Demonstrating his mastery of Japanese-language sources, Drea explains how the Japanese style of warfare, burnished by samurai legends, shaped the army, narrowed its options, influenced its decisions, and made it the institution that conquered most of Asia. He also tells how the army's intellectual foundations shifted as it reinvented itself to fulfill the changing imperatives of Japanese society-and how the army in turn decisively shaped the nation's political, social, cultural, and strategic course. Drea recounts how Japan devoted an inordinate amount of its treasury toward modernizing, professionalizing, and training its army-which grew larger, more powerful, and politically more influential with each passing decade. Along the way, it produced an efficient military schooling system, a well-organized active duty and reserve force, a professional officer corps that thought in terms of regional threat, and well-trained soldiers armed with appropriate weapons. Encompassing doctrine, strategy, weaponry, and civil-military relations, Drea's expert study also captures the dominant personalities who shaped the imperial army, from Yamagata Aritomo, an incisive geopolitical strategist, to Anami Korechika, who exhorted the troops to fight to the death during the final days of World War II. Summing up, Drea also suggests that an army that places itself above its nation's interests is doomed to failure.
Author: Paul E. Dunscomb
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739146025
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265
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Book Description
The fifty months of the Siberian Intervention encompass the existential crisis which affected Japanese at virtually all levels when confronted with the new 'world situation' left in the wake of the First World War. From elite politicians and military professionals, to public intellectuals and the families of servicemen in small garrison towns, the intervention was perceived as a test of how Japan might fit itself into the emerging postwar world order. Both domestically and internationally Japan's actions in Siberia were seen as critical proof of the nation's ability, depending on one's viewpoint, to embrace or to ride out the 'trends of the times,' the seeming triumph of constitutional democracy and Wilsonian internationalism. The course of the Siberian Intervention illuminates the struggle to cement 'responsible' party cabinets at the heart of Japanese decision making, the high water mark of efforts to bring the Japanese military under civilian control, the attempt to fundamentally reshape Japanese continental policy, and the hopes of millions of Japanese that their voices be heard and their desires respected by the nation's leaders. The book attempts a broad examination of domestic politics, foreign policy, and military action by incorporating a wide array of voices through a detailed examination of public comment and discussion in journals and magazines, the major circulation daily newspapers of Tokyo and Osaka as well as those of smaller cities such as Nara, Mito, Oita, and Tsuruga.
Author: Jonathan Clements
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 1462922864
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 311
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Book Description
"A lucid history of the rise and fall of militarism in Japan…" --New York Journal of Books Japan at War in the Pacific recounts the dramatic story of Japan's transformation from a Samurai-led feudal society to a modern military-industrial empire in the space of a few decades--and the many wars it fought along the way. These culminated in an attempt by Japan's military leaders to create an Asia-Pacific empire which at its greatest extent rivaled the British Empire in scope and power. The battle for supremacy in the Pacific brought the Japanese to great heights but led ultimately to the nation's utter devastation at the end of World War II, culminating with the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki--the only time such weapons have been used in warfare. In this book, author Jonathan Clements offers fascinating insights into: The wars that Japan fought during its rise to supremacy in the western Pacific, including the Russo-Japanese War, the seizure of Manchuria and war in China, and the Pacific theater of World War II. The many military actions undertaken by Imperial Japanese forces including the horrific "Rape of Nanjing," the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the decisive defeat at the Battle of Midway, the savage Battles of Okinawa and Iwo Jima, and many more. The motivations and beliefs of Japan's leaders, as well as the policy decisions of a government dedicated to expansion which ultimately led to a complete dismantling of the nation's political and social order during the Allied Occupation. With over 75 photographs and maps, this book vividly recounts the brutal story of Japan's military conquests. Clements charts the evolution of the Japanese empire in the Pacific and the influence of a ruthless military-led government on everything from culture and food to fashion and education--including the anthems and rallying calls of a martial nation which were silenced long ago but continue to echo in Asian politics.
Author: Oleg Benesch
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 019101673X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
Inventing the Way of the Samurai examines the development of the 'way of the samurai' - bushidō - which is popularly viewed as a defining element of the Japanese national character and even the 'soul of Japan'. Rather than a continuation of ancient traditions, however, bushidō developed from a search for identity during Japan's modernization in the late nineteenth century. The former samurai class were widely viewed as a relic of a bygone age in the 1880s, and the first significant discussions of bushidō at the end of the decade were strongly influenced by contemporary European ideals of gentlemen and chivalry. At the same time, Japanese thinkers increasingly looked to their own traditions in search of sources of national identity, and this process accelerated as national confidence grew with military victories over China and Russia. Inventing the Way of the Samurai considers the people, events, and writings that drove the rapid growth of bushidō, which came to emphasize martial virtues and absolute loyalty to the emperor. In the early twentieth century, bushidō became a core subject in civilian and military education, and was a key ideological pillar supporting the imperial state until its collapse in 1945. The close identification of bushidō with Japanese militarism meant that it was rejected immediately after the war, but different interpretations of bushidō were soon revived by both Japanese and foreign commentators seeking to explain Japan's past, present, and future. This volume further explores the factors behind the resurgence of bushidō, which has proven resilient through 130 years of dramatic social, political, and cultural change.
Author: Sabine Frühstück
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520968840
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 314
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Book Description
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Few things make Japanese adults feel quite as anxious today as the phenomenon called the “child crisis.” Various media teem with intense debates about bullying in schools, child poverty, child suicides, violent crimes committed by children, the rise of socially withdrawn youngsters, and forceful moves by the government to introduce a more conservative educational curriculum. These issues have propelled Japan into the center of a set of global conversations about the nature of children and how to raise them. Engaging both the history of children and childhood and the history of emotions, contributors to this volume track Japanese childhood through a number of historical scenarios. Such explorations—some from Japan’s early-modern past—are revealed through letters, diaries, memoirs, family and household records, and religious polemics about promising, rambunctious, sickly, happy, and dutiful youngsters.
Author: Peter R. Mansoor
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108485731
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 485
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Book Description
Examines how military culture forms and changes, as well as its impact on the effectiveness of military organizations.
Author: Denis Gainty
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135069905
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 206
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Book Description
In 1895, the newly formed Greater Japan Martial Virtue Association (Dainippon Butokukai) held its first annual Martial Virtue Festival (butokusai) in the ancient capital of Kyoto. The Festival marked the arrival of a new iteration of modern Japan, as the Butokukai’s efforts to define and popularise Japanese martial arts became an important medium through which the bodies of millions of Japanese citizens would experience, draw on, and even shape the Japanese nation and state. This book shows how the notion and practice of Japanese martial arts in the late Meiji period brought Japanese bodies, Japanese nationalisms, and the Japanese state into sustained contact and dynamic engagement with one another. Using a range of disciplinary approaches, Denis Gainty shows how the metaphor of a national body and the cultural and historical meanings of martial arts were celebrated and appropriated by modern Japanese at all levels of society, allowing them to participate powerfully in shaping the modern Japanese nation and state. While recent works have cast modern Japanese and their bodies as subject to state domination and elite control, this book argues that having a body – being a body, and through that body experiencing and shaping social, political, and even cosmic realities – is an important and underexamined aspect of the late Meiji period. Martial Arts and the Body Politic in Meiji Japan is an important contribution to debates in Japanese and Asian social sciences, theories of the body and its role in modern historiography, and related questions of power and agency by suggesting a new and dramatic role for human bodies in the shaping of modern states and societies. As such, it will be valuable to students and scholars of Japanese studies, Japanese history, modern nations and nationalisms, and sport and leisure studies, as well as those interested in the body more broadly.
Author: Francesca Di Marco
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317384288
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 269
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Book Description
Japan’s suicide phenomenon has fascinated both the media and academics, although many questions and paradoxes embedded in the debate on suicide have remained unaddressed in the existing literature, including the assumption that Japan is a "Suicide Nation". This tendency causes common misconceptions about the suicide phenomenon and its features. Aiming to redress the situation, this book explores how the idea of suicide in Japan was shaped, reinterpreted and reinvented from the 1900s to the 1980s. Providing a timely contribution to the underexplored history of suicide, it also adds to the current heated debates on the contemporary way we organize our thoughts on life and death, health and wealth, on the value of the individual, and on gender. The book explores the genealogy and development of modern suicide in Japan by examining the ways in which beliefs about the nation’s character, historical views of suicide, and the cultural legitimation of voluntary death acted to influence even the scientific conceptualization of suicide in Japan. It thus unveils the way in which the language on suicide was transformed throughout the century according to the fluctuating relationship between suicide and the discourse on national identity, and pathological and cultural narratives. In doing so, it proposes a new path to understanding the norms and mechanisms of the process of the conceptualization of suicide itself. Filling in a critical gap in three particular fields of historical study: the history of suicide, the history of death, and the cultural history of twentieth century Japan, it will be of great interest to students and scholars of Japanese Studies and Japanese History.
Author: David Chapman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134512988
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318
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Book Description
Japan’s Household Registration System (koseki seido) is an extremely powerful state instrument, and is socially entrenched with a long history of population governance, social control and the maintenance of social order. It provides identity whilst at the same time imposing identity upon everyone registered, and in turn, the state receives validity and legitimacy from the registration of its inhabitants. The study of the procedures and mechanisms for identifying and documenting people provides an important window into understanding statecraft, and by examining the koseki system, this book provides a keen insight into social and political change in Japan. By looking through the lens of the koseki system, the book takes both an historical as well as a contemporary approach to understanding Japanese society. In doing so, it develops our understanding of contemporary Japan within the historical context of population management and social control; reveals the social effects and influence of the koseki system throughout its history; and presents new insights into citizenship, nationality and identity. Furthermore, this book develops our knowledge of state functions and indeed the nation state itself, through engaging critically with important issues relating to the koseki while at the same time providing a platform for further investigation. The contributors to this volume utilise a variety of disciplinary areas including history, gender studies, sociology, law and anthropology, and each chapter provides insights that bring us closer to a comprehensive grasp of the role, effects and historical background of what is a crucial and influential instrument of the Japanese state. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Japanese history, Japanese culture and society, Japanese studies, Asian social policy and demography more generally.
