Why are the Japanese fascinated with the Jews? By showing that the modern attitude is the result of a process of accretion begun 200 years ago, this book describes the development behind Japanese ideas of Jews and how these images are reflected in their modern intellectual life

Before World War I, Japan did not have an antisemitic tradition of its own. Although influences of Western antisemitism reached the country in the late 19th century, it was only during Japan's participation in the Siberian Intervention of 1918-22 that the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" made their way to Japan. The dissemination of this work promoted "conspiracy and scapegoating antisemitism" in the country. In 1920-21, several Japanese translations of the "Protocols" appeared, and the topics of Jewish omnipotence and the "Jewish peril" ("Yudayaka" in Japanese) became widespread in the mass media and in literature. One of the themes discussed was the "Jewish character" of the Bolshevik Revolution. Discusses writings by Eiju Oniwa, Tsuyanoske Higuchi (aka Baiseki Kitagami), Seika Ariga, Minetaro Yamanaka, Tokio Imai, etc., as well as the writings of those who criticized the conception of the "Jewish world conspiracy" and rejected the "Yudayaka" and the veracity of the "Protocols": Sakuzo Yoshino, Tokusaburo Hatta, Kametaro Mitsukawa, Masao Kinoshita, and others. In 1929 a roundtable on the "Jewish problem" was organized by the magazine "Heibon".

The image of Jews in East Asia is a strange mixture of opposites, a paradoxical blend of admiration and mockery, identification and denial. This book explores what ‘Jew’ means to many East Asians, and whether it is anything that Jewish people themselves would recognise. There is clearly a positive fascination: various bestsellers entitled Talmud are found in vending machines and public schools, while private ‘Jewish education’ institutions have opened across South Korea, claiming to improve children’s IQ. People can stay at the Talmud Business Hotel in Taiwan, or attend Chinese centres for Jewish Studies with academics who have never met a Jew. There is a legend that Japanese people are a Lost Tribe of Israel, and ‘Anne’s day’, named after Anne Frank, is a euphemism for menstruation. Yet the region also shows some of the world’s highest rates of antisemitism, manifesting in disturbing ways: Taiwan’s concentration camp–themed restaurant, or South Korea’s ‘Adolf Hitler Techno Bar & Cocktail Show’. By integrating scholarship on antisemitism, East Asian Studies and cognitive science, Schilling uncovers antisemitism’s global, sometimes dualistic nature; not Western, and always persistent. He offers ground-breaking insight, redefining how we understand East Asia, antisemitism, and Judaism as a globalised religion.

Jews in Japan: Presence and Perception. Antisemitism, Philosemitism and International Relations is a study on the history of real and imagined Jews in Japan, which discusses the little known cultural, political and economic ties between Jews and Japan, and follows the evolution of Jewish stereotypes in Japan in the last century and a half. The book begins with the arrival of Jews and their image in late 19th to early 20th-century Japan, when the seeds of later stereotyped visions were sown. The discussion then focuses on wartime Japan, delving into the complex and mixed attitudes of the Japanese Empire toward Jews. In postwar Japan, the partial reception of the Holocaust intertwined with earlier antisemitic and philosemitic manifestations, resulting in instances of both hatred and admiration toward Jews. Finally, the book explores the recent reframing of Japanese-Jewish historical encounters within the context of the growing ties between Japan and Israel. This study sheds new light on the little explored relations between Jews and Japan, offering thought-provoking insights into the coexistence of antisemitism and philosemitism, the political and diplomatic uses of Jewish history, and the perpetuation of Jewish stereotypes in a land devoid of a local Jewish population.

This book assesses the plight of the European Jewish refugees who fled to Japanese-occupied China during the Second World War. It examines the Nationalist government's policy towards the Jewish refugee issue and the most thorough and subtle analysis of Japanese diplomacy concerning this matter. The story of the wartime "Shanghai Jews" is not merely a side-bar to the history of modern China or modern Japan. It is a story that illuminates how the "Jewish issue" complicated the relationships among China, Japan, Germany, and the United States before and during World War Two. Both the Chinese Nationalist government and the Japanese occupation authorities thought very carefully about the Shanghai Jews and how they could be used to win international financial and political support in their war against one another. Thus, the Holocaust had complicated repercussions that extended far beyond Europe. The diaspora of Jews to East Asia in the era of the Second World War is a rich and complex story that deserves our attention as well. Firmly grounded in archival sources from the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, Japan, the United States, Britain, and Israel, this book is comparative and transnational in scope and makes an important contribution to the international history of the period.

In this now classic book, internationally famed journalist Ian Buruma examines how Germany and Japan have attempted to come to terms with their conduct during World War II—a war that they aggressively began and humiliatingly lost, and in the course of which they committed monstrous war crimes. As he travels through both countries, to Berlin and Tokyo, Hiroshima and Auschwitz, he encounters people who are remarkably honest in confronting the past and others who astonish by their evasions of responsibility, some who wish to forget the past and others who wish to use it as a warning against the resurgence of militarism. Buruma explores these contrasting responses to the war and the two countries’ very different ways of memorializing its atrocities, as well as the ways in which political movements, government policies, literature, and art have been shaped by its shadow. Today, seventy years after the end of the war, he finds that while the Germans have for the most part coped with the darkest period of their history, the Japanese remain haunted by historical controversies that should have been resolved long ago. Sensitive yet unsparing, complex and unsettling, this is a profound study of how people face up to or deny terrible legacies of guilt and shame.

During World War II the Japanese were stereotyped in the European imagination as fanatical, cruel, almost inhuman - an image reflected in most books and films about prisoner of war in the Far East. While the Japanese certainly treated those they captured badly, behaving far worse to Chinese and native captives than to Europeans, the conventional view of the Japanese is unhistorical and simplistic. It fails to recognize that the Japanese were acting at a time of supreme national crisis trial, at a particular period of their history, and that their attitudes were influenced by a combination of their perception of their own racial identity mixed with a powerful historical tradition. This collection of essays, by both western and Japanese scholars, aims to see the question from a historical viewpoint, and from both a western and Japanese perspective, looking at it in the light of both longer-term influences, notably the Japanese attempt to establish themselves as an honorary white race. The essays also examine particular instances. Conditions in the almost self-run camp at Changi contrasted remarkably with those on the Burma Railway, where disease and a failure to provide supplies caused terrible suffering. The book also addresses the other side of the question, looking at the treatment of Japanese prisoners in Allied captivity.