EALC 303: Writing Empire (HC/BMC) Spring 2022

Encyclopedia of Invasions & Conquests is a comprehensive guide to over 150 invasions, conquests, battles and occupations, from the ancient times to the present. With brand new articles on the Coalition Invasion of Iraq, the Serbian Invasion of Bosnia-Herz

A considerable amount of writing has been published on Japan at war in the Second World War, and more recently scholars have been revisiting the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5; whereas this volume strives to examine Japan's twentieth-century approach to war and militarism in a wider perspective, bringing hitherto unexamined new themes and subject-matter under scrutiny up to the present day. Among the topics covered are The February 26 Incident in Theatre and Film, Ethnicity and Gender in Wartime Japanese Revue Theatre, Military Festivals and the Japanese Self-Defence Forces, Major Trends in Japanese Treatment of POWs in Modern Times, and Japan's ‘Tug of War'after the Russian War. Published to mark the distinguished academic career of Ben-Ami Shillony, who retired in 2006, this volume also offers valuable new insights into the theme of the Japanese and the Jews, including the Story and Myth of Anne Frank and Sadako Sasaki, the involvement of Jewish scientists in the making of the atomic bomb, and Japan's Jewish Policy in the late 1930s.

The 1970s were a period of dramatic change in relations between Japan and the People's Republic of China (PRC). The two countries established diplomatic relations for the first time, forged close economic ties and reached political agreements that still guide and constrain relations today. This book delivers a history of this foundational period in Sino-Japanese relations. It presents an up-to-date diplomatic history of the relationship but also goes beyond this to argue that Japan's relations with China must be understood in the context of a larger "China problem" that was inseparable from a domestic contest to define Japanese national identity. The China Problem in Postwar Japan challenges some common assertions or assumptions about the role of Japanese national identity in postwar Sino-Japanese relations, showing how the history of Japanese relations with China in the 1970s is shaped by the strength of Japanese national identity, not its weakness.

In an era marked by atrocities perpetrated on a grand scale, the tragedy of the so-called comfort women--mostly Korean women forced into prostitution by the Japanese army--endures as one of the darkest events of World War II. These women have usually been labeled victims of a war crime, a simplistic view that makes it easy to pin blame on the policies of imperial Japan and therefore easier to consign the episode to a war-torn past. In this revelatory study, C. Sarah Soh provocatively disputes this master narrative.             Soh reveals that the forces of Japanese colonialism and Korean patriarchy together shaped the fate of Korean comfort women--a double bind made strikingly apparent in the cases of women cast into sexual slavery after fleeing abuse at home. Other victims were press-ganged into prostitution, sometimes with the help of Korean procurers. Drawing on historical research and interviews with survivors, Soh tells the stories of these women from girlhood through their subjugation and beyond to their efforts to overcome the traumas of their past. Finally, Soh examines the array of factors-- from South Korean nationalist politics to the aims of the international women's human rights movement--that have contributed to the incomplete view of the tragedy that still dominates today.