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Embracing 'Asia' in China and Japan

Asianism Discourse and the Contest for Hegemony, 1912-1933

Torsten Weber author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Springer International Publishing AG

Published:4th Jun '19

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Embracing 'Asia' in China and Japan cover

This book examines how Asianism became a key concept in mainstream political discourse between China and Japan and how it was used both domestically and internationally in the contest for political hegemony. It argues that, from the early 1910s to the early 1930s, this contest changed Chinese and Japanese perceptions of ‘Asia’, from a concept that was foreign-referential, foreign-imposed, peripheral, and mostly negative and denied (in Japan) or largely ignored (in China) to one that was self-referential, self-defined, central, and widely affirmed and embraced. As an ism, Asianism elevated ‘Asia’ as a geographical concept with culturalist-racialist implications to the status of a full-blown political principle and encouraged its proposal and discussion vis-à-vis other political doctrines of the time, such as nationalism, internationalism, and imperialism. By the mid-1920s, a great variety of conceptions of Asianism had emerged in the transnational discourse between Japan and China. Terminologically and conceptually, they not only paved the way for the appropriation of ‘Asia’ discourse by Japanese imperialism from the early 1930s onwards but also facilitated the embrace of Sino-centric conceptions of Asianism by Chinese politicians and collaborators.

ISBN: 9783319879604

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 562g

407 pages

Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 2018