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Wartime Japanese Anthropology in Asia and the Pacific, edited by Akitoshi Shimizu and Jan van Bremen. Senri Ethnological Studies 65. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology, 2003. ISBN 4-901906-21-6 c3039; vii + 300 pages, tables, figures, photographs, notes, bibliography. ¥1190.
In December 1999, a workshop on "Wartime Japanese Anthropology in Asia and Oceania" was held at the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka. The present volume is an outcome of that workshop. Since the end of World War II, Japanese wartime anthropology has been a field growing in stature and credibility, beginning as an outgrowth of Japanese colonization in Asia, as well as colonization by other nations in Southeast Asia. The Japanese army's invasion of Manchuria in 1931, and soon of other parts of China, was the start of a long period of war involving many people and large areas of land in Asia and the Pacific Islands. After much serious and bloody fighting, the Japanese were driven from Asia and the Pacific by UK and US military forces.
The compilers of this volume contend that wartime Japanese anthropology is a field of its own today. In the first chapter, "Wartime Anthropology: A Global Perspective," Jan van Bremen looks for...