Studying the development, expansion, and eventual collapse of Japanese imperialism from the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-1895 through 1945, Beasley here discusses the dynamic relationship between a successful industrial economy and the building of an empire.

The Oxford Handbook of the Ends of Empire offers the most comprehensive treatment of the causes, course, and consequences of the collapse of empires in the twentieth century. The volume's contributors convey the global reach of decolonization, analysing the ways in which European, Asian, and African empires disintegrated over the past century.

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Placing Empire examines the spatial politics of Japanese imperialism through a study of Japanese travel and tourism to Korea, Manchuria, and Taiwan between the late nineteenth century and the early 1950s. In a departure from standard histories of Japan, this book shows how debates over the role of colonized lands reshaped the social and spatial imaginary of the modern Japanese nation and how, in turn, this sociospatial imaginary affected the ways in which colonial difference was conceptualized and enacted. The book thus illuminates how ideas of place became central to the production of new forms of colonial hierarchy as empires around the globe transitioned from an era of territorial acquisition to one of territorial maintenance.

This extended monograph examines the work of the radical journalist Kotoku Shusui and Japan’s anti-imperialist movement of the early twentieth century. It includes the first English translation of Imperialism (Teikokushugi), Kotoku’s classic 1901 work. Kotoku Shusui was a Japanese socialist, anarchist, and critic of Japan’s imperial expansionism who was executed in 1911 for his alleged participation in a plot to kill the emperor. His Imperialism was one of the first systematic criticisms of imperialism published anywhere in the world. In this seminal text, Kotoku condemned global imperialism as the commandeering of politics by national elites and denounced patriotism and militarism as the principal causes of imperialism. In addition to translating Imperialism, Robert Tierney offers an in-depth study of Kotoku’s text and of the early anti-imperialist movement he led. Tierney places Kotoku’s book within the broader context of early twentieth-century debates on the nature and causes of imperialism. He also presents a detailed account of the different stages of the Japanese anti-imperialist movement. Monster of the Twentieth Century constitutes a major contribution to the intellectual history of modern Japan and to the comparative study of critiques of capitalism and colonialism.

In the Ruins of the Japanese Empire concludes that early East Asian Cold War history needs to be studied within the framework of post-imperial history. Japan’s surrender did not mean that the Japanese and former imperial subjects would immediately disavow imperial ideology. The end of the Japanese empire unleashed unprecedented destruction and violence on the periphery. Lives were destroyed; names of cities altered; collaborationist regimes—which for over a decade dominated vast populations—melted into the air as policeman, bureaucrats, soldiers, and technocrats offered their services as nationalists, revolutionaries or communists. Power did not simply change hands swiftly and smoothly. In the chaos of the new order, legal anarchy, revenge, ethnic displacement, and nationalist resentments stalked the postcolonial lands of northeast Asia, intensifying bloody civil wars in societies radicalized by total war, militarization, and mass mobilization. Kushner and Levidis’s volume follows these processes as imperial violence reordered demographics and borders, and involved massive political, economic, and social dislocation as well as stubborn continuities. From the hunt for “traitors” in Korea and China to the brutal suppression of the Taiwanese by the Chinese Nationalist government in the long-forgotten February 28 Incident, the research shows how the empire’s end acted as a catalyst for renewed attempts at state-building. From the imperial edge to the metropole, investigations shed light on how prewar imperial values endured during postwar Japanese rearmament and in party politics. Nevertheless, many Japanese actively tried to make amends for wartime transgressions and rebuild Japan’s posture in East Asia by cultivating religious and cultural connections. “This third book to emerge from Barak Kushner’s massive collaborative research project on the dissolution of Japan’s empire lays out a new geography of turning the ruins into social, economic, political, and cultural opportunities across Northeast Asia, and with lasting consequences. This book will change the way we research and teach ‘1945’ in a global context.” —Franziska Seraphim, Boston College “Writing imperial history, linking the prewar to postwar, is perilous because it must resist domestic taboos and social pressures. Today’s global society, where history incites extreme nationalism and serves as catalyst for conflict, calls for the creation of a new history of the end of empire as Kushner and his team have done in this volume.” —ASANO Toyomi, Waseda University

This important book, which many will regard as controversial, argues convincingly that the Japanese imperialism of the first half of the Twentieth Century was not a temporary aberration. The author looks at the detail of the great crisis of 1873 and shows that the prospect of economic gain through overseas expansion was the central issue of that year's political struggles. He goes on to show that Japan had a long, earlier history of aiming for economic expansion overseas; and that Japan's Twentieth Century imperialism grew out of this. In addition, he argues convincingly that much of the writing about Japan has played down the true extent and nature of Japanese imperialism.

Japan and the Specter of Imperialism examines competing Japanese responses to the late nineteenth century unequal treaty regime as a confrontation with liberal imperialism, including the culture and gender politics of US territorial expansion into the Pacific.