China and Japan in the Global Setting: 5 (The Edwin O. Reischauer Lectures) - Softcover

Iriye, Akira

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0674118391 ISBN 13: 9780674118393

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1998

Synopsis

The relationship between China and Japan remains among the most significant of all the world's bilateral affairs-yet it is also the most tortured and the least understood. Akira Iriye adds brilliant clarity to the past century of Chinese-Japanese interactions in this masterful interpretive survey. Placing the relationship within its global context, he outlines three distinct periods in the history of these Asian giants. From the 1880s to World War I, the two nations struggled for power. Armaments, war strategies, and security measures played pivotal roles, reflecting the importance 0f military calculations in a world dominated by Western governments. In the second period, that between the two World Wars, Iriye illuminates the dominant role of culture and the stress on internationalism. China's continuing literary influence, an exchange of ideas and students reforms such as Japan's Taisho democracy and China's May Fourth movement, and both nations' bid for racial equality in the West profoundly affected these interwar years. The third period reaches from the end of World War II through the present day, and is characterized by exchanges of an economic nature: trade, shipping, investment, and emigration. The author discusses the results of China's civil war, the rise and decline 0f the Cold War in the West, and the cultural and ecological problems brought by Japan's spiraling economic development. But economic ties remain deeply entwined with cultural concerns, and ultimately, Iriye stresses, the future of China and Japan depends on the successful cultural interdependence of what may be the most significant pair of countries in the world today.

About this title

Review:

The best single work available on this host complex relationship, which too often has been the subject of politicized and simplified analysis.--William Kirby (Harvard University)

This is an eloquently written, serious, and original set of lectures. The book will interest political scientists as much as historians because of its explicit orientation to what the author calls 'international history' and because of his very interesting manipulation of the three concepts of power, economy, and culture in order to explain why his three eras--late Meiji, interwar, and postwar--differ from each other.--Chalmers Johnson (University of California, San Diego)

Synopsis:

The relationship between China and Japan remains among the least understood of all the world's bilateral affairs. Akira Iriye adds clarity to the past century of this relationship in an interpretative survey. Placing it within its global context, he outlines three distinct periods - spanning the late 19th to late 20th centuries - in the history of these Asian giants. Throughout, he stresses that the future of China and Japan depends on the successful cultural interdependence of what may be the most significant pair of countries in the world today.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0674118391
• ISBN 13: 9780674118393
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 168