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7 Works 172 Members 4 Reviews

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Includes the name: Mark Peattie

Works by Mark R. Peattie

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The reasons I can't quite bring myself to give this book top marks basically boil down to how even the best anthology is never quite as coherent as a straight narrative will be, and that this isn't quite as fresh a take as I hoped. I suspect that it's been in circulation long enough, and I've done enough related reading in that period, that the findings of the contributors have influenced those books. That I finally got to this work (it's been on various "to-read" lists since it was published) was due to a passing comment by the novelist Rebecca Kuang that this was one of the works she found most useful in her education.

For the average reader of history this will be a serious jag to their expectations. If they are aware of China's war with Japan at all, they will have probably learned about it through the prism of Barbara Tuchman's biography of "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell, and have picked up the dismissive opinion of the Nationalist war effort. This book is anything but dismissive of that effort, but the participants are collectively critical of Tokyo's rudimentary sense of strategy. I read this as an inter-library loan but I'm feeling like I actually have to own a copy.
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½
 
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Shrike58 | May 1, 2021 |
In September 1931, Japan began a series of conquests that ended fourteen years later with a surrender signed in Tokyo Bay and the dismantling of their empire. Yet despite the scale of Japan's dominion and its role in reshaping East Asia and the western Pacific there has been relatively little written about this empire. One of the few books available that gives readers a sense of the origins of the empire, its operations, and its legacy is this collection of essays. The product of a 1991 academic conference, the thirteen chapters that comprise the text offer readers an incomplete yet valuable mosaic of its subject, one that is all the more worth reading because of the paucity of other works on the topic.

The essays in the book are divided into four groups, each of which examines different aspects of the empire. The first of these concentrates on the role Japan's prewar colonies in Korea and Taiwan played in their newly expanded empire, showing the ongoing Japanese efforts to assimilate their territories into a Japan-dominated East Asia. Here the two authors, Carter Eckert and Wan-yao Chou, emphasize the efforts of the Japanese to incorporate these territories into their economic network, even to the point of encouraging industrialization. Yet development increased the demand for raw materials at a time when the Depression-driven trends were causing trade to break down. This fueled the drive for further territories, which is the focus of the book's second and third sections. In these two parts, which together comprise the heart of the book, focus on the two stages of Japan's imperial expansion during this period: first the conquest of Manchuria, and then the Western imperial possessions in southeast Asia. Here readers learn of the growing domestic enthusiasm for empire, the effort to expand Japan's economic dominion of the region, and the response of indigenous groups in southeastern Asia to the Japanese-driven challenge to the Western empires in their region. The final section of the book expands the focus chronologically by considering the postwar legacy of Japan's empire and how it compared to that of its wartime partner, Nazi Germany. In these essays, the authors involved consider the enduring legacy of Japan's empire, and how it continued to define the region for the next half-century and more.

Though the essays themselves address specific topics, collectively they provide a surprisingly coherent overview of Japan's empire during this period, with the key arguments in the essays stitched together by Peter Duus's superb introduction at the start of the book into a comprehensive picture of its overall subject. The result is a work that serves as a useful resource for anyone seeking to learn about Japan's wartime empire and the changes it brought to eastern Asia. The authors' labors are especially valuable considering the long shadow the war continues to cast on the region. For while readers interested in the empire or the war itself will undoubtedly find much of interest in this collection, given the extent to which the region still bears the imprint of the conflict it is one that should be also read by anyone interested in understanding it today.
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MacDad | Mar 27, 2020 |
A very full competent account of the Japanese involvement in the Pacific islands, from early comtacts during the Meiji era to the Japanese occupation of the islands, ostensibly as League of Nations mandates, from the end of World War I through the American conquest in World War II. Peattie shows consideable admiration for the Japanese achievement in modernizing the islands, though he s aware it was by no means always to the benefit of the native people. He ends by saying that several part-Japanese and Japanese-educated Micronesians have been important leaders in the recently independent Micronesian states.… (more)
 
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antiquary | Mar 5, 2017 |
This book is an excellent reference work, with compelling documentation, for anyone who reads about the Pacific Air Battles of WW2. However, it is also a very good book to read; with perceptive scope and sufficient depth to sustain your interest. A great starting point for anyone interested in air combat in the Pacific but keep it nearby so that you can access it readily as you delve deeper into a war that transformed our world.
½
 
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jamespurcell | Jun 1, 2011 |

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Carter J. Eckert Contributor
Ken'Ichi Goto Contributor
George Hicks Contributor
E. Bruce Reynolds Contributor
l.h. gann Contributor
Takafusa Nakamura Contributor
Hideo Kobayashi Contributor
Wan-yao Chou Contributor
Y. Tak Matsusaka Contributor

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Works
7
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Rating
½ 4.5
Reviews
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