Though when people discuss World War I, they usually center on the fighting in Europe, it truly was a global war. This book examines the role of East Asia in the fighting. It looks at how East Asian commentators saw and interpreted the war, both in Europe and elsewhere, and what lessons they drew from the experience for their own societies. What influence did World War I have on East Asian visions of the world order? Presenting scholarship by a number of East Asian authors in English for the first time, the book greatly expands our understanding of World War I and its effects.

Some striking act in a man’s career is necessary to attract general attention to him. The one who moves along through his path in life doing nothing out of the ordinary, will win few glances from the public, and little will the world notice his existence. Worthy of the worthiest he may be, but if he does nothing to demonstrate it, how shall the world know his merit or his strength? But with all this true, it does not follow that it is man’s duty to seek an occasion to advertise these qualities. Only when the necessity for action arises, then should he act, and then will the world know what his ability and character are. The same is true as to the nations of the earth. Those years during which they move onward in their national life and history in peace and quietness, however full of latent strength they may be, are not the ones which command the attention of the eyes of the world. It is the year of supreme test, of struggle, moral or physical, that furnishes crucial testimony what the nation really is. War is always a curse unless it be waged to advance justice and assure more worthy peace. But if such a war be necessary, the progress of it, the results, and the lessons they teach are essential to the student of humanity, in whatever quarter of the globe the battles are. China, Japan and Corea are a strange trinity to most of us in the western world. Separated from us by long distances and by immense differences in race, in language, in religion, and in customs, they have been known here only through the writings of the comparatively few travelers who exchange visits. Of late years, it is true, the hermitages of the Orient have been opening to freer intercourse, trade and treaties have multiplied, and students have come to us for the knowledge we could give them. But there was needed a great movement of some sort to awaken the Orient from its centuries of slumber, and to make known to us the truth of eastern affairs. Nothing could do this as the War in the East has done. We can study its conduct and its results if we will, in a way to teach us more of the characteristics of the three nations than we could learn in any other way. It has been the object of the author in the present volume, to record the facts of the war and its preliminaries so clearly that every seeker for knowledge might trace the lessons for himself. To justify this effort, it is necessary to say no more than that the conflict involves directly nations whose total population includes more than one-fourth of the human race. And the results will affect the progress of civilization in those countries, as well as the commercial and other interests of all the European and American nations. Invertebrate China, with scorn of western methods, and complacent rest in the belief that all but her own people are barbarians, had to face an inevitable war with Japan, the sprightly, absorbent, adaptive, western-spirited, whose career in the two score years since her doors were opened to the call of the American Perry has been the marvel of those who knew it. And the conflict was to be on the soil of the Hermit Nation, Corea, “the Land of Morning Calm,” for centuries the land of contention between “the Day’s Beginning” and “the Middle Kingdom.” It is to record the history and description of these realms and peoples in sufficient detail to make plainer the facts of the war that the preliminary chapters are written. The work must speak for itself. The importance of the subjects included in the volume must be the explanation of any inadequacy of treatment.

The East Asian War of 1592 to 1598 was the only extended war before modern times to involve Japan, Korea, and China. It devastated huge swathes of Korea and led to large population movements across borders. This book draws on surviving letters and diaries to recount the personal experiences of five individuals from different backgrounds who lived through the war and experienced its devastating effects: a Chinese doctor who became a spy; a Japanese samurai on his first foreign expedition; a Korean gentleman turned refugee; a Korean scholar-diplomat; and a Japanese Buddhist monk involved in the atrocities of the invasion. The book outlines the context of the war so that readers can understand the background against which the writers' lives were lived, allows the individual voices of the five men and their reflections on events to come through, and casts much light on prevailing attitudes and conditions, including cultural interaction, identity, cross-border information networks, class conflict, the role of religion in society, and many others aspects of each writer's world.

As East Asia regains its historical position as a world centre, information on the history of regional relations becomes ever more critical. Astonishingly, Northeast Asia enjoyed five centuries of international peace from 1400 to 1894, broken only by one major international war – the invasion of Korea in the 1590s by Japan’s ruler Hideyoshi. This war involved Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, Southeast Asians, and Europeans; it saw the largest overseas landing in world history up to that time and devastated Korea. It also highlighted the nature of the strategic balance in the region, presenting China’s Ming dynasty with a serious threat that perhaps foreshadowed the dynasty’s subsequent overthrow by the Manchus, played a major part in the establishment of the Tokugawa regime with its policy of peace and controlled access to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Japan, and demonstrated the importance for regional stability of the subtle relationship of Korea to both China and Japan. This book presents a comprehensive analysis of the war and its aftermath in all its aspects – military, political, social, economic, and cultural. As such it deepens understanding of East Asian international relations and provides important insights into the strategic concerns that continue to operate in the region at present.

A complete history of the War: Its causes and results; its campaigns on sea and lad; its terrific fights, gradn victories and overwhelming defeats. With a preliminary account of the customs, habits and history of the three peoples involved. Their cities, arts, sciences, amusements and literature.