Japanese Society at War: Death, Memory and the Russo-Japanese War

As the first international conflict of the twentieth century, the Russo-Japanese War attracted much contemporary global interest. This text was the first full-length study to examine the war from the perspective of its impact on Japanese society, and sheds light on its implications for modern Japan. What did the war mean to the Japanese people and how did they respond to it? Naoko Shimazu presents a fascinating and highly innovative account of the attitudes of ordinary Japanese people towards the war through a wide range of sources including personal diaries, letters, and contemporary images. She deals with themes such as conscripts and battlefield death, war commemoration, heroic myths, and war in popular culture. Challenging the orthodox view of Meiji Japan as monolithic, she shows that there existed a complex and ambivalent relationship between the Japanese state and society.

Author: Naoko Shimazu
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 06/30/2011
Pages: 354
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.14lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.79d
ISBN: 9780521294775

About the Author
Shimazu, Naoko: - Naoko Shimazu's major publications include Imagining Japan in Post-war East Asia (co-editor, 2013), Nationalisms in Japan (editor, 2006) and Japan, Race and Equality: The Racial Equality Proposal of 1919 (1998). She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Professorial Associate of the Japan Research Centre at SOAS, University of London, Associate of MEARC at Leiden University, and a former Japan Foundation Fellow. She serves on the editorial boards of Japan Forum, Modern Asian Studies, Reviews in History, and Theory, Culture and Society. Her current major project is a monograph, Diplomacy as Theatre: Asian and African Performances at the Bandung Conference of 1955.

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