Japan's Imperial Underworlds: Intimate Encounters at the Borders of Empire (Asian Connections) - Softcover

Ambaras, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1108455220 ISBN 13: 9781108455220

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2019

Synopsis

This major new study uses vivid accounts of encounters between Chinese and Japanese people living at the margins of empire to elucidate Sino-Japanese relations in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Each chapter explores mobility in East Asia through the histories of often ignored categories of people, including trafficked children, peddlers, 'abducted' women and a female pirate. These stories reveal the shared experiences of the border populations of Japan and China and show how they fundamentally shaped the territorial boundaries that defined Japan's imperial world and continue to inform present-day views of China. From Meiji-era treaty ports to the Taiwan Strait, South China, and French Indochina, the movements of people in marginal locations not only destabilized the state's policing of geographical borders and social boundaries, but also stimulated fantasies of furthering imperial power.

About this title

About the Author

David R. Ambaras is Associate Professor of History at North Carolina State University. His publications include Bad Youth: Juvenile Delinquency and the Politics of Everyday Life in Modern Japan (2006). He has received fellowships from the National Humanities Center and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1108455220
• ISBN 13: 9781108455220
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 300