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Japan's Total Empire

Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism

Louise Young author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:University of California Press

Published:20th Aug '99

Should be back in stock very soon

Japan's Total Empire cover

Winner of the John K. Fairbank Prize of the American Historical Association and Hiromi Arisawa Award of the American Association of University Presses.

This examination of Japanese imperialism focuses on the domestic impact of Japan's activities in Northeast China between 1931 and 1945, to consider the "metropolitan effects" of empire building - how the Japanese people imagined and experienced the empire they called Manchukuo.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.

ISBN: 9780520219342

Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 30mm

Weight: 635g

500 pages