In Search of Japan's Hidden Christians is a remarkable story of suppression, secrecy and survival in the face of human cruelty and God’s apparent silence. Part history, part travelogue, it explores and seeks to explain a clash of civilizations—of East and West—that resonates to this day. For seven generations, Japan’s ‘Hidden Christians’ preserved a faith that was forbidden on pain of death. Just as remarkably, descendants of the Hidden Christians continue to practise their beliefs today, refusing to rejoin the Catholic Church. Why? And what is it about Japanese culture that makes it so resistant to Western Christianity?
As the influence of the United States in Asia declines with the end of the Cold War, America must look more to brains than military might in achieving our objectives in the region. But after repeatedly allowing Japan - our closest ally in Asia - to mislead us intellectually and psychologically, how well are we prepared to deal with less friendly emerging powers like China and India? Based on three decades of on-the-spot observation and participation in Japan, Ivan Hall's provocative work draws the reader into a world of intellectual manipulation and gullibility, false images, emotional blackmail, financial beguilement, and fatuous expectations. It illuminates the many ways that American ideological hubris and Japanese pleading for special treatment combine to deprive our trans-Pacific dialogue of the honesty, openness, and plain common sense of our trans-Atlantic intellectual ties with Europe.
Focusing on a detailed look at Japanese apologies for the Second World War from 1984 to 1995, this book explores the issues of motive, what makes an apology a 'success', interactive/dialogical dimensions, international pressures, and role of apology in a changing international moral climate.
As the twenty-first century dawns, China stands at a crossroads. The largest and most populous country on earth and currently the world's second biggest economy, China has recently reclaimed its historic place at the center of global affairs after decades of internal chaos and disastrous foreign relations. But even as China tentatively reengages with the outside world, the contradictions of its development risks pushing it back into an era of insularity and instability -- a regression that, as China's recent history shows, would have serious implications for all other nations. In Restless Empire, award-winning historian Odd Arne Westad traces China's complex foreign affairs over the past 250 years, identifying the forces that will determine the country's path in the decades to come. Since the height of the Qing Empire in the eighteenth century, China's interactions -- and confrontations -- with foreign powers have caused its worldview to fluctuate wildly between extremes of dominance and subjugation, emulation and defiance. From the invasion of Burma in the 1760s to the Boxer Rebellion in the early 20th century to the 2001 standoff over a downed U.S. spy plane, many of these encounters have left Chinese with a lingering sense of humiliation and resentment, and inflamed their notions of justice, hierarchy, and Chinese centrality in world affairs. Recently, China's rising influence on the world stage has shown what the country stands to gain from international cooperation and openness. But as Westad shows, the nation's success will ultimately hinge on its ability to engage with potential international partners while simultaneously safeguarding its own strength and stability. An in-depth study by one of our most respected authorities on international relations and contemporary East Asian history, Restless Empire is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the recent past and probable future of this dynamic and complex nation.
The unresolved territorial dispute between Japan and Russia over the South Kuril Islands/Northern Territories remains the largest obstacle to concluding a peace treaty and fully normalising bilateral relations between the two nations. This book traces the evolution of transnational relations between subnational public authorities in Hokkaido and Sakhalin, examining the interrelationship between these ties and the Russo-Japanese territorial dispute. The book investigates why the development of Hokkaido-Sakhalin relations has failed to create, at the subnational level, an environment conducive to resolving (kankyo seibi) the South Kuril Islands/Northern Territories dispute. Brad Williams suggests that kankyo seibi has not worked primarily because Russia’s troubled transition to a liberal democratic market economy has manifested itself in ways that have ultimately increased the South Kuril Islands’ intrinsic and instrumental value for the Sakhalin public and regional elite. This in turn has limited the impact from the twin transnational processes of cultural and economic exchange in alleviating opposition to the transferral of these disputed islands to Japan. Drawing upon a wealth of primary and secondary sources from both countries, this book utilises levels of analysis and an analytical framework that incorporates national and subnational, as well as governmental and non-governmental forces to discuss a relatively unexplored aspect of Russo-Japanese relations. As such, Resolving the Russo-Japanese Territorial Dispute will appeal to students and scholars of Asian politics, international relations and post-communist states.
This important new study focusing on the ultranationalist regimes in Germany and Japan during the 1930s and 1940s examines in biographical format the roles played by individuals significantly involved in the drive for global hegemony. Employing a considerable range of new source materials and eyewitness testimony on the German side, it highlights the roles of the Nazi Party ‘enforcer’ and Gestapo representative in East Asia, Josef Albert Meisinger, and of the officer commanding German naval forces in the Pacific region, Admiral Paul Werner Wenneker, agent Richard Sorge as whose relations with the Japanese Navy in the 1930s were observed and recalled by Engineer-Commander George C. Ross, the UK assistant naval attaché in Japan. The reactions of the German aero-engineer, Willi Foerster, a client of the Soviet radio operator, Max Clausen, to both Meisinger and Wenneker in the 1940s are also documented. On the Japanese side, new evidence is employed which examines the influence of the right-wing business and political figure, Sasagawa Ryôichi, on domestic events during the era of ‘Tennô-fascism’ and its aftermath. Similarly, an analysis of the role of the head of wartime Japanese military intelligence in eastern Europe, General Onodera Makoto, based in Stockholm, indicates the extent of opposition within the Japanese army to factional groups wedded to Nazi ideology and strategy and the ongoing support in Japan for anti-Soviet and anti-communist policies in the post-war era.
This collection is concerned with revisiting and redefining the political economy - both empirical and theoretical - of 'foreign policy' in the South as we approach the twenty-first century: the position of post-colonial states and societies in the post-Bretton Woods and Cold War world. With a focus on Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America, this collection comparatively examines the impact of changing political and economic structures upon policy-makers and civil societies in the South.
This pioneering collection of 15 essays argues that Japan's medieval age began in the 14th century rather than the 12th, and marks the beginning of a fundamentally new debate about how Japan's lengthy classical period finally ended.
This book is a study of cross-border activity in and around Japanese universities, employing ‘Asia’ as the cornerstone of inquiry. It offers qualitative, case-based analysis of Asia-oriented student mobility and partnership projects, framed by critical evaluation of discourses and texts concerning Japan’s positioning in an era of Asian ascendancy. This combination of Asia as theme and international higher education as empirical subject matter allows the book to shed new light on some of the fundamental policy currents in contemporary Japan. It also furnishes a fresh approach to comprehending the modalities of regionalism and regionalisation in the sphere of higher education.
