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NATIONALISM AND INTERNATIONALISM IN IMPERIALJAPAN: AUTONOMY, ASIAN BROTHERHOOD, OR WORLD CITIZENSHIP By Dick Stegewerns (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003)
THE ANGLO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE, 1902-1922 By Phillips Payson O'Brien (ed.) (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004)
THE BRISBANE LINE: A REAPPRAISAL By Drew Cottle (Leicestershire, Upfront Publishing, 2002)
DID SINGAPORE HAVE TO FALL?: CHURCHILL AND THE IMPREGNABLE FORTRESS? By Kael Hack and Kevin Blackburn (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004)
LANGUAGE, IDEOLOGY, AND JAPANESE HISTORY TEXTBOOKS By Christopher Barnard (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003)
RECENTERING GLOBALIZATION: POPULAR CULTUREAND JAPANESE TRANSNATIONALISM By Koichi Iwabuchi (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002)
Edited by Dick Stegewerns, Nationalism and Internationalism in Imperial Japan: Autonomy, Asian Brotherhood or World Citizenship brings together a group of scholars assigned the task of ruminating upon Japan's pre-war dilemma as to nationalism and internationalism or how a culturally autonomous Japan might relate to a pluralistic and interactive world. The tension between globalism, Asianism, and nationalism is no less germane to contemporary debates in Japan as suggested by Japan's dispatch to Iraq in January 2004 of units of its "Self-Defense Forces," the first such deployment to a war zone since the end of the Pacific War. Stegewerns argues in an introduction that while nationalism and internationalism are mostly treated as opposite forces, the latter benign, the former undesirable, a new trend in thinking is to look at the complimentarity of the two.
In an opening section on theory, Stegewerns traces the debate in Japanese intellectual circles back to the Meiji period, but with the advent of the age of multinational treaties, Japan was plunged into a wider world order. He then surveys the thinking on this issue by seminal Taisho and early Showa opinion leaders. Even so, he is careful to avoid dividing various time periods and various individuals and groups of actors between the two categories of nationalism and internationalism. He also cautions on the glib translation or reception of these terms in Japanese language. Kevin M. Doak offers a theoretical approach to nationalism, internationalism and liberalism from outside the Japanese discourse as a necessary prelude before folding it back in the discussion on Japan. Specifically, he traces this discussion back to the early Meiji state, winning its international legitimacy but still consolidating...