The end of Japan's empire appeared to happen very suddenly and cleanly - but, as this book shows, it was in fact very messy, with a long period of establishing or re-establishing the postwar order. Moreover, as the authors argue, empires have afterlives, which, in the case of Japan's empire, is not much studied. This book considers the details of deimperialization, including the repatriation of Japanese personnel, the redrawing of boundaries, issues to do with prisoners of war and war criminals and new arrangements for democratic political institutions, for media and for the regulation of trade. It also discusses the continuing impact of empire on the countries ruled or occupied by Japan, where, as a result of Japanese management and administration, both formal and informal, patterns of behavior and attitudes were established that continued subsequently. This was true in Japan itself, where returning imperial personnel had to be absorbed and adjustments made to imperial thinking, and in present-day East Asia, where the shadow of Japan's empire still lingers. This legacy of unresolved issues concerning the correct relationship of Japan, an important, energetic, outgoing nation and a potential regional "hub," with the rest of the region not comfortably settled in this era, remains a fulcrum of regional dispute.
"When the Japanese empire ended, it did not necessarily go away. Throughout East Asia, its legacy lingers on. This volume presents fresh and exciting new work, much of it published in English for the first time. It helps us understand how the demise of empire left its mark on the beginning of the Cold War in Asia, and continues to shape political relations in the region to this day."
Prof. Dr. Sebastian Conrad, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.
"This ambitious volume brings together the latest in Japanese and Western scholarship on the turbulent years following the end of Japan's empire in East Asia. It examines the uneven physical retreat of the Japanese empire, which disappeared abruptly in some places within days of the surrender and yet persisted much longer in other places. More than that, it grapples with mind-sets, with the changes that were forced by the surrender and those that stubbornly resisted pressure to change. It is a rewarding expedition into geographies of the mind in post-war East Asia."
Professor Robert Cribb, Australian National University.
"The Dismantling of Japan's Empire in East Asia: Deimperialization, Postwar Legitimation and Imperial Afterlife is a quintessential work examining with great profundity, the complex historical dissolution of the Japanese Empire, and affording postwar Japan a forward-looking vision for its future national narrative."
Blake I. Campbell, Independent Researcher
