Although the Japanese empire rapidly dissolved following the end of World War II, the memories, mourning, and trauma of the nation's imperial exploits continue to haunt Korea, China, and Taiwan. In Anti-Japan Leo T. S. Ching traces the complex dynamics that shape persisting negative attitudes toward Japan throughout East Asia. Drawing on a mix of literature, film, testimonies, and popular culture, Ching shows how anti-Japanism stems from the failed efforts at decolonization and reconciliation, the Cold War and the ongoing U.S. military presence, and shifting geopolitical and economic conditions in the region. At the same time, pro-Japan sentiments in Taiwan reveal a Taiwanese desire to recoup that which was lost after the Japanese empire fell. Anti-Japanism, Ching contends, is less about Japan itself than it is about the real and imagined relationships between it and China, Korea, and Taiwan. Advocating for forms of healing that do not depend on state-based diplomacy, Ching suggests that reconciliation requires that Japan acknowledge and take responsibility for its imperial history.

Traven argues that universal moral beliefs and emotions shaped the evolution of international laws that protect civilians in war.

Family photography, a ubiquitous domestic tradition in the developed world, is now more popular than ever thanks to the development of digital photography. Once uploaded to PCs and other gadgets, photographs may be stored, deleted, put in albums, sent to relatives and friends, retouched, or put on display. Moreover, in recent years family photographs are more frequently appearing in public media: on posters, in newspapers and on the Internet, particularly in the wake of disasters like 9/11, and in cases of missing children. Here, case study material drawn from the UK offers a deeper understanding of both domestic family photographs and their public display. Recent work in material culture studies, geography, and anthropology is used to approach photographs as objects embedded in social practices, which produce specific social positions, relations and effects. Also explored are the complex economies of gifting and exchange amongst families, and the rich geographies of domestic and public spaces into which family photography offers an insight.

What if the job of police was to cultivate the political will of a community to live with itself (rather than enforce law, keep order, or fight crime)? In Sentiment, Reason, and Law, Jeffrey T. Martin describes a world where that is the case. The Republic of China on Taiwan spent nearly four decades as a single-party state under dictatorial rule (1949–1987) before transitioning to liberal democracy. Here, Martin describes the social life of a neighborhood police station during the first rotation in executive power following the democratic transition. He shows an apparent paradox of how a strong democratic order was built on a foundation of weak police powers, and demonstrates how that was made possible by the continuity of an illiberal idea of policing. His conclusion from this paradox is that the purpose of the police was to cultivate the political will of the community rather than enforce laws and keep order. As Sentiment, Reason, and Law shows, the police force in Taiwan exists as an "anthropological fact," bringing an order of reality that is always, simultaneously and inseparably, meaningful and material. Martin unveils the power of this fact, demonstrating how the politics of sentiment that took shape under autocratic rule continued to operate in everyday policing in the early phase of the democratic transformation, even as a more democratic mode of public reason and the ultimate power of legal right were becoming more significant.

Between 1890 and 1930, the port city of Guayaquil, Ecuador, experienced a liberal revolution and a worker's movement—key elements in shaping the Ecuadorian national identity. In this book, O. Hugo Benavides examines these and other pivotal features in shaping Guayaquilean identity and immigrant identity formation in general in transnational communities such as those found in New York City. Turn-of-the-century Ecuador witnessed an intriguing combination of transformations: the formation of a national citizenship; extension of the popular vote to members of a traditional underclass of Indians and those of African descent; provisions for union organizing while entering into world market capitalist relations; and a separation of church and state that led to the legalization of secular divorces. Assessing how these phenomena created a unique cultural history for Guayaquileans, Benavides reveals not only a specific cultural history but also a process of developing ethnic attachment in general. He also incorporates a study of works by Medardo Angel Silva, the Afro-Ecuadorian poet whose singular literature embodies the effects of Modernism's arrival in a locale steeped in contradictions of race, class, and sexuality. Also comprising one of the first case studies of Raymond Williams's hypothesis on the relationship between structures of feeling and hegemony, this is an illuminating illustration of the powerful relationships between historically informed memories and contemporary national life.

Unlike other Asian countries liberated from Japanese rule by the United States, postwar South Korea was occupied by American military forces until 1948. As a result, its postwar history was profoundly influenced by the Cold War. It is often believed that the United States encouraged, but failed to bring about, the normalization of relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK). How actively did the United States work to resolve outstanding issues between the two countries? How much importance did it attach to the normalization of relations, particularly in the context of the escalation of the Korean war? These and many other important questions are addressed in Sung-hwa Cheong's important new work. Cheong examines the principal disputes between Japan and South Korea from 1945 to 1952. He argues that as an autonomous force popular anti-Japanese sentiment in Korea did not play a major role in preventing normalization of relations between the two nations. Rather, the diplomatic deadlock was caused by the political posturing of President Syngman Rhee, who manipulated popular anti-Japanese feelings in order to stabilize his regime. The book also addresses how such diplomatic issues as the fishery dispute, financial claims, the territorial dispute, and the legal status of Korean residents in Japan emerged as political weapons in Korea to be manipulated by various political groups to their own advantage. Cheong also evaluates the extent to which the United States tried to assist the normalization of relations between Japan and the ROK as part of its own Cold War strategy in the Far East. He examines the American, Japanese, and Korean views toward the San Francisco Peace Treaty and the first conference on normalization. He argues that at this juncture, the Americans were interested in disengagement from Korea rather than in actively forging an anti-Communist alliance between Japan and the ROK. The author concludes that public antagonism toward Japan only became an obstacle to the normalization of diplomatic relations after Rhee deliberately stimulated anti-Japanese sentiment as part of a calculated policy that originated in his own political insecurity. This analysis sheds considerable new light on a shadowy aspect of the history of the Cold War in Asia and is recommended reading for all scholars and students of the postwar Far East.

Illuminates the political dimensions of American and British antislavery texts written by blacks