Download or read book Japan in the American Century written by Kenneth B. Pyle and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-15 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No nation was more deeply affected by America’s rise to world power than Japan. President Franklin Roosevelt’s uncompromising policy of unconditional surrender led to the catastrophic finale of the Asia-Pacific War and the most intrusive international reconstruction of another nation in modern history. Japan in the American Century examines how Japan, with its deeply conservative heritage, responded to the imposition of a new liberal order. The price Japan paid to end the occupation was a cold war alliance with the United States that ensured America’s dominance in the region. Still traumatized by its wartime experience, Japan developed a grand strategy of dependence on U.S. security guarantees so that the nation could concentrate on economic growth. Yet from the start, despite American expectations, Japan reworked the American reforms to fit its own circumstances and cultural preferences, fashioning distinctively Japanese variations on capitalism, democracy, and social institutions. Today, with the postwar world order in retreat, Japan is undergoing a sea change in its foreign policy, returning to an activist, independent role in global politics not seen since 1945. Distilling a lifetime of work on Japan and the United States, Kenneth Pyle offers a thoughtful history of the two nations’ relationship at a time when the character of that alliance is changing. Japan has begun to pull free from the constraints established after World War II, with repercussions for its relations with the United States and its role in Asian geopolitics.

Download or read book Japanese Expansion and American Policies Classic Reprint written by James Francis Abbott and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2018-03-22 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Japanese Expansion and American Policies IN this little book, I have attempted to give the facts upon which I base my opinion that war between Japan and America during the present generation is a most unlikely contingency. The fact that such a war is not an impossibility is the chief reason why the American people should inform themselves thoroughly regarding Japan and our relations with that Empire. For if war comes, it will be largely our own fault. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Download or read book Economic Policy in Postwar Japan written by Kozo Yamamura and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2022-04-29 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the end of the Pacific War, Japan has, broadly speaking, pursued two economic policies: a "democratization" policy laid down by the Allied Powers, and subsequently a "de-democratization" policy formulated and vigorously pursued by the independent government. Yamamura here addresses himself to two central questions: What were the objectives and results of each policy? And why and how did the earlier one give way to the later? Yamamura never loses sight of his main theme--the transformation of the economic "democratization" policy of the Occupation period into the growth policy pursued by the Japanese government thereafter. He is concerned not so much to provide a comprehensive study of Japanese economic policy as to examine selected facets of it--for example, taxation policies, anti- and pro-monopoly legislation, the position of the Zaibatsu, and the social costs of economic concentration. He deals with topics that are hotly debated in Japan and elsewhere, but his tone is never polemical, and his judgments are cool and scholarly. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1967.

Download or read book Japan s Decision For War In 1941 Some Enduring Lessons written by Dr. Jeffrey Record and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2015-11-06 with total page 105 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Japan’s decision to attack the United States in 1941 is widely regarded as irrational to the point of suicidal. How could Japan hope to survive a war with, much less defeat, an enemy possessing an invulnerable homeland and an industrial base 10 times that of Japan? The Pacific War was one that Japan was always going to lose, so how does one explain Tokyo’s decision? Did the Japanese recognize the odds against them? Did they have a concept of victory, or at least of avoiding defeat? Or did the Japanese prefer a lost war to an unacceptable peace? Dr. Jeffrey Record takes a fresh look at Japan’s decision for war, and concludes that it was dictated by Japanese pride and the threatened economic destruction of Japan by the United States. He believes that Japanese aggression in East Asia was the root cause of the Pacific War, but argues that the road to war in 1941 was built on American as well as Japanese miscalculations and that both sides suffered from cultural ignorance and racial arrogance. Record finds that the Americans underestimated the role of fear and honor in Japanese calculations and overestimated the effectiveness of economic sanctions as a deterrent to war, whereas the Japanese underestimated the cohesion and resolve of an aroused American society and overestimated their own martial prowess as a means of defeating U.S. material superiority. He believes that the failure of deterrence was mutual, and that the descent of the United States and Japan into war contains lessons of great and continuing relevance to American foreign policy and defense decision-makers.

Download or read book Japan Rising written by Kenneth Pyle and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2009-04-27 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Japan is on the verge of a sea change. After more than fifty years of national pacifism and isolation including the "lost decade" of the 1990s, Japan is quietly, stealthily awakening. As Japan prepares to become a major player in the strategic struggles of the 21st century, critical questions arise about its motivations. What are the driving forces that influence how Japan will act in the international system? Are there recurrent patterns that will help explain how Japan will respond to the emerging environment of world politics? American understanding of Japanese character and purpose has been tenuous at best. We have repeatedly underestimated Japan in the realm of foreign policy. Now as Japan shows signs of vitality and international engagement, it is more important than ever that we understand the forces that drive Japan. In Japan Rising, renowned expert Kenneth Pyle identities the common threads that bind the divergent strategies of modern Japan, providing essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how Japan arrived at this moment -- and what to expect in the future.

Download or read book MITI and the Japanese Miracle written by Chalmers Johnson and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1982-06 with total page 818 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The focus of this book is on the Japanese economic bureaucracy, particularly on the famous Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), as the leading state actor in the economy. Although MITI was not the only important agent affecting the economy, nor was the state as a whole always predominant, I do not want to be overly modest about the importance of this subject. The particular speed, form, and consequences of Japanese economic growth are not intelligible without reference to the contributions of MITI. Collaboration between the state and big business has long been acknowledged as the defining characteristic of the Japanese economic system, but for too long the state's role in this collaboration has been either condemned as overweening or dismissed as merely supportive, without anyone's ever analyzing the matter. The history of MITI is central to the economic and political history of modern Japan. Equally important, however, the methods and achievements of the Japanese economic bureaucracy are central to the continuing debate between advocates of the communist-type command economies and advocates of the Western-type mixed market economies. The fully bureaucratized command economies misallocate resources and stifle initiative; in order to function at all, they must lock up their populations behind iron curtains or other more or less impermeable barriers. The mixed market economies struggle to find ways to intrude politically determined priorities into their market systems without catching a bad case of the "English disease" or being frustrated by the American-type legal sprawl. The Japanese, of course, do not have all the answers. But given the fact that virtually all solutions to any of the critical problems of the late twentieth century--energy supply, environmental protection, technological innovation, and so forth--involve an expansion of official bureaucracy, the particular Japanese priorities and procedures are instructive. At the very least they should forewarn a foreign observer that the Japanese achievements were not won without a price being paid.

Download or read book War Memory and Social Politics in Japan 1945 2005 written by Franziska Seraphim and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Japan has long wrestled with the memories and legacies of World War II. In the aftermath of defeat, war memory developed as an integral part of particular and divergent approaches to postwar democracy. In the last six decades, the demands placed upon postwar democracy have shifted considerablyâe"from social protest through high economic growth to Japanâe(tm)s relations in Asiaâe"and the meanings of the war shifted with them. This book unravels the political dynamics that governed the place of war memory in public life. Far from reconciling with the victims of Japanese imperialism, successive conservative administrations have left the memory of the war to representatives of special interests and citizen movements, all of whom used war memory to further their own interests. Franziska Seraphim traces the activism of five prominent civic organizations to examine the ways in which diverse organized memories have secured legitimate niches within the public sphere. The history of these domestic conflictsâe"over the commemoration of the war dead, the manipulation of national symbols, the teaching of history, or the articulation of relations with China and Koreaâe"is crucial to the current discourse about apology and reconciliation in East Asia, and provides essential context for the global debate on war memory.

Download or read book The Making of Japanese Settler Colonialism written by Sidney Xu Lu and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-25 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shows how Japanese anxiety about overpopulation was used to justify expansion, blurring lines between migration and settler colonialism. This title is also available as Open Access.

Download or read book At Dawn We Slept written by Gordon William Prange and published by Penguin Group. This book was released on 1982 with total page 920 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At 7:53 a.m., December 7, 1941, America's national consciousness and confidence were rocked as the first wave of Japanese warplanes took aim at the U.S. Naval fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor. As intense and absorbing as a suspense novel, At Dawn We Slept is the unparalleled and exhaustive account of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. It is widely regarded as the definitive assessment of the events surrounding one of the most daring and brilliant naval operations of all time. Through extensive research and interviews with American and Japanese leaders, Gordon W. Prange has written a remarkable historical account of the assault that-sixty years later-America cannot forget.

Download or read book Hard Line written by Colin Dueck and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-09-05 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conservatives and liberals alike are currently debating the probable future of the Republican Party. What direction will conservatives and republicans take on foreign policy in the age of Obama? This book tackles this question.

Download or read book Japan 1941 written by Eri Hotta and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-10-29 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking history that considers the attack on Pearl Harbor from the Japanese perspective and is certain to revolutionize how we think of the war in the Pacific. When Japan launched hostilities against the United States in 1941, argues Eri Hotta, its leaders, in large part, understood they were entering a war they were almost certain to lose. Drawing on material little known to Western readers, and barely explored in depth in Japan itself, Hotta poses an essential question: Why did these men—military men, civilian politicians, diplomats, the emperor—put their country and its citizens so unnecessarily in harm’s way? Introducing us to the doubters, schemers, and would-be patriots who led their nation into this conflagration, Hotta brilliantly shows us a Japan rarely glimpsed—eager to avoid war but fraught with tensions with the West, blinded by reckless militarism couched in traditional notions of pride and honor, tempted by the gambler’s dream of scoring the biggest win against impossible odds and nearly escaping disaster before it finally proved inevitable. In an intimate account of the increasingly heated debates and doomed diplomatic overtures preceding Pearl Harbor, Hotta reveals just how divided Japan’s leaders were, right up to (and, in fact, beyond) their eleventh-hour decision to attack. We see a ruling cadre rich in regional ambition and hubris: many of the same leaders seeking to avoid war with the United States continued to adamantly advocate Asian expansionism, hoping to advance, or at least maintain, the occupation of China that began in 1931, unable to end the second Sino-Japanese War and unwilling to acknowledge Washington’s hardening disapproval of their continental incursions. Even as Japanese diplomats continued to negotiate with the Roosevelt administration, Matsuoka Yosuke, the egomaniacal foreign minister who relished paying court to both Stalin and Hitler, and his facile supporters cemented Japan’s place in the fascist alliance with Germany and Italy—unaware (or unconcerned) that in so doing they destroyed the nation’s bona fides with the West. We see a dysfunctional political system in which military leaders reported to both the civilian government and the emperor, creating a structure that facilitated intrigues and stoked a jingoistic rivalry between Japan’s army and navy. Roles are recast and blame reexamined as Hotta analyzes the actions and motivations of the hawks and skeptics among Japan’s elite. Emperor Hirohito and General Hideki Tojo are newly appraised as we discover how the two men fumbled for a way to avoid war before finally acceding to it. Hotta peels back seventy years of historical mythologizing—both Japanese and Western—to expose all-too-human Japanese leaders torn by doubt in the months preceding the attack, more concerned with saving face than saving lives, finally drawn into war as much by incompetence and lack of political will as by bellicosity. An essential book for any student of the Second World War, this compelling reassessment will forever change the way we remember those days of infamy.

Download or read book Princes of the Yen written by Richard Werner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-03-04 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This eye-opening book offers a disturbing new look at Japan's post-war economy and the key factors that shaped it. It gives special emphasis to the 1980s and 1990s when Japan's economy experienced vast swings in activity. According to the author, the most recent upheaval in the Japanese economy is the result of the policies of a central bank less concerned with stimulating the economy than with its own turf battles and its ideological agenda to change Japan's economic structure. The book combines new historical research with an in-depth behind-the-scenes account of the bureaucratic competition between Japan's most important institutions: the Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Japan. Drawing on new economic data and first-hand eyewitness accounts, it reveals little known monetary policy tools at the core of Japan's business cycle, identifies the key figures behind Japan's economy, and discusses their agenda. The book also highlights the implications for the rest of the world, and raises important questions about the concentration of power within central banks.

Download or read book The Logic of Japanese Politics written by Gerald L. Curtis and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2000-11-05 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Widely recognized both in America and Japan for his insider knowledge and penetrating analyses of Japanese politics, Gerald Curtis is the political analyst best positioned to explore the complexities of the Japanese political scene today. Curtis has personally known most of the key players in Japanese politics for more than thirty years, and he draws on their candid comments to provide invaluable and graphic insights into the world of Japanese politics. By relating the behavior of Japanese political leaders to the institutions within which they must operate, Curtis makes sense out of what others have regarded as enigmatic or illogical. He utilizes his skills as a scholar and his knowledge of the inner workings of the Japanese political system to highlight the commonalities of Japanese and Western political practices while at the same time explaining what sets Japan apart. Curtis rejects the notion that cultural distinctiveness and consensus are the defining elements of Japan's political decision making, emphasizing instead the competition among and the profound influence of individuals operating within particular institutional contexts on the development of Japan's politics. The discussions featured here -- as they survey both the detailed events and the broad structures shaping the mercurial Japanese political scene of the 1990s -- draw on extensive conversations with virtually all of the decade's political leaders and focus on the interactions among specific politicians as they struggle for political power. The Logic of Japanese Politics covers such important political developments as • the Liberal Democratic Party's egress from power in 1993, after reigning for nearly four decades, and their crushing defeat in the "voters' revolt" of the 1998 upper-house election; • the formation of the 1993 seven party coalition government led by prime minister Morihiro Hosokawa and its collapse eight months later; • the historic electoral reform of 1994 which replaced the electoral system operative since the adoption of universal manhood suffrage in 1925; and • the decline of machine politics and the rise of the mutohaso -- the floating, nonparty voter. Scrutinizing and interpreting a complex and changing political system, this multi-layered chronicle reveals the dynamics of democracy at work -- Japanese-style. In the process, The Logic of Japanese Politics not only offers a fascinating picture of Japanese politics and politicians but also provides a framework for understanding Japan's attempts to surmount its present problems, and helps readers gain insight into Japan's future.

Download or read book Japan s New Deal for China written by JUNE. GRASSO and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes the publications produced by Japanese organizations to influence American attitudes and policy in the years before Pearl Harbour. Examining original Japanese English-language propaganda sources from the 1920s and 1930s, it will be of huge interest to historians of Japan, China, the US and World War II more broadly.

Download or read book Technology of Empire written by Daqing Yang and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-04-18 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the extension of the Japanese empire in the 1930s and 1940s, technology, geo-strategy, and institutions were closely intertwined in empire building. The central argument of this study of the development of a communications network linking the far-flung parts of the Japanese imperium is that modern telecommunications not only served to connect these territories but, more important, made it possible for the Japanese to envision an integrated empire in Asia. Even as the imperial communications network served to foster integration and strengthened Japanese leadership and control, its creation and operation exacerbated long-standing tensions and created new conflicts within the government, the military, and society in general.

Download or read book The Making of Modern Japan written by Marius B. Jansen and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 933 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Magisterial in vision, sweeping in scope, this monumental work presents a seamless account of Japanese society during the modern era, from 1600 to the present. A distillation of more than fifty years’ engagement with Japan and its history, it is the crowning work of our leading interpreter of the modern Japanese experience. Since 1600 Japan has undergone three periods of wrenching social and institutional change, following the imposition of hegemonic order on feudal society by the Tokugawa shogun; the opening of Japan’s ports by Commodore Perry; and defeat in World War II. The Making of Modern Japan charts these changes: the social engineering begun with the founding of the shogunate in 1600, the emergence of village and castle towns with consumer populations, and the diffusion of samurai values in the culture. Marius Jansen covers the making of the modern state, the adaptation of Western models, growing international trade, the broadening opportunity in Japanese society with industrialization, and the postwar occupation reforms imposed by General MacArthur. Throughout, the book gives voice to the individuals and views that have shaped the actions and beliefs of the Japanese, with writers, artists, and thinkers, as well as political leaders given their due. The story this book tells, though marked by profound changes, is also one of remarkable consistency, in which continuities outweigh upheavals in the development of society, and successive waves of outside influence have only served to strengthen a sense of what is unique and native to Japanese experience. The Making of Modern Japan takes us to the core of this experience as it illuminates one of the contemporary world’s most compelling transformations.

Download or read book Military Alliances in the Twenty First Century written by Alexander Lanoszka and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2022-01-10 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alliance politics is a regular headline grabber. When a possible military crisis involving Russia, North Korea, or China rears its head, leaders and citizens alike raise concerns over the willingness of US allies to stand together. As rival powers have tightened their security cooperation, the United States has stepped up demands that its allies increase their defense spending and contribute more to military operations in the Middle East and elsewhere. The prospect of former President Donald Trump unilaterally ending alliances alarmed longstanding partners, even as NATO was welcoming new members into its ranks. Military Alliances in the Twenty-First Century is the first book to explore fully the politics that shape these security arrangements – from their initial formation through the various challenges that test them and, sometimes, lead to their demise. Across six thematic chapters, Alexander Lanoszka challenges conventional wisdom that has dominated our understanding of how military alliances have operated historically and into the present. Although military alliances today may seem uniquely hobbled by their internal difficulties, Lanoszka argues that they are in fact, by their very nature, prone to dysfunction.