In the wake of its defeat in World War II, as Japan was forced to remake itself from "empire" to "nation" in the face of an uncertain global situation, literature and literary criticism emerged as highly contested sites. Today, this remarkable period holds rich potential for opening new dialogue between scholars in Japan and North America as we rethink the historical and contemporary significance of a number of important issues, including the meaning of the American occupation both inside and outside of Japan, the shifting semiotics of "literature" and "politics," and the origins of crucial ideological weapons of the cultural Cold War. This collection features works by Japanese intellectuals written in the immediate postwar period. These writings-many appearing in English for the first time-offer explorations into the social, political, and philosophical debates among Japanese literary elites that shaped the country's literary culture in the aftermath of defeat.

This comprehensive volume traces the evolution of Japanese military history-from 300 AD to present day foreign relations-and reveals how the country's cultural views of power, violence, and politics helped shape Japan's long and turbulent history of war. The legacy of Japanese warfare is steeped in honor, duty, and valor. Yet, some of the more violent episodes in this country's military history have tainted foreign attitudes toward Japan, oftentimes threatening the economic stability of the Pacific region. This book documents Japan's long and stormy history of war and military action, provides a thorough analysis of the social and political changes that have contributed to the evolution of Japan's foreign policy and security decisions, and reveals the truth behind the common myths and misconceptions of this nation's iconic war symbols and events, including samurais, warlords, and kamikaze attacks. Written by an author with military experience and insight into modern-day Japanese culture gained from living in Japan, A Military History of Japan: From the Age of the Samurai to the 21st Century examines how Japan's history of having warrior-based leaderships, imperialist governments, and dictators has shaped the country's concepts of war. It provides a complete military history of Japan-from the beginning of the Imperial institution to the post-Cold War era-in a single volume. This thoughtful resource also contains photos, maps, and a glossary of key Japanese terms to support learning. Compiles Japan's complete military history in one volume Reveals the strategic blunders and poor choices that led to Japan's surrender to the United States in 1945 Provides in-depth coverage of the popular and compelling Samurai, Imperial, and Shogun periods of history

China is on the rise in the globalized world. The relationship between China and the United States has become the most important global issue in the twenty-first century. It is urgent to understand what is happening in China and where China is heading. However, there are many misconceptions about China in the West, which affect Westerners' ability to objectively understand China, and, ultimately influence the making of foreign policy toward China. The author attempts to challenge the misconceptions coming from both Western societies and China, and offer an integrated picture of contemporary China through systematically examining the major aspects of contemporary Chinese society and culture with the most recent data, and presents convincing arguments in eighteen chapters for spurring mutual understanding between China and the West. The author intends this book to be an interdisciplinary and comprehensive guide to China for a general audience, and it covers a wide variety of topics, including history, family, population, Chinese women, economy, environmental issues, politics, religion, media, U.S.-China relations, and other subjects. This book demonstrates the author's extensive research and thoughtful examination of many sides of controversial issues related to China with a nice balance of Western and Chinese scholarship. This is one of the few that are authored by scholars who originate from China and have their professional career in the United States, but it is distinctive from the rest of studies on this subject in that the author is committed to examining today's China from Chinese as well as Western perspectives. This is not only a scholarly book, but also is suitable for general classes on China.

Arguably, trade is the engine of history, and the acceleration in what you mightcall 'globalism' from the beginning of the last millennium has been driven by communities interacting with each other through commerce and exchange. The Ottoman empire was a trading partner for the rest of the world, and therefore the key link between the west and the middle east in the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries. much academic attention has been given to the east india Company, but less well known is the Levant Company, which had the exclusive right to trade with the Ottoman empire from 1581 to 1825. The Levant Company exported British manufacturing, colonial goods and raw materials, and imported silk, cotton, spices, currants and other Levantine goods. it set up 'factories' (trading establishments) across Ottoman lands and hired consuls, company employees and agents from among its members, as well as foreign tradesmen and locals. here, despina vlami outlines the relationship between the Ottoman empire and the Levant Company, and traces the company's last glimpses of prosperity combined with slump periods and tension, as both the Ottoman and the British empire faced significant change and war. she points out that the growth of 'free' trade and the end of protectionism coincided with modernisation and reforms, and while doing so, provides a new lens through which to view the decline of the Ottoman world.

For every gallon of ink that has been spilt on the trans-Atlantic slave trade and its consequences, only one very small drop has been spent on the study of the forced migration of black Africans into the Mediterranean world of Islam. From the ninth to the early twentieth century, probably as many black Africans were forcibly taken across the Sahara, up the Nile valley, and across the Red Sea, as were transported across the Atlantic in a much shorter period. Yet their story has not yet been told. This book provides an introduction to this ""other"" slave trade, and to the Islamic cultural context within which it took place, as well as the effect this context had on those who were its victims. After an introductory essay, there are sections on Basic Texts (Qur'an and Hadith), Some Muslim Views on Slavery, Slavery and the Law, Perceptions of Africans in Some Arabic and Turkish Writings, Slave Capture, the Middle Passage, Slave Markets, Eunuchs and Concubines, Domestic Service, Military Service, Religion and Community, Freedom and Post-Slavery, and the Abolition of Slavery. A concluding segment provides a first-person account of the capture, transportation, and service in a Saharan oasis by a West African male, as related to a French official in the 1930s.

This Key Concepts pivot explores the aesthetic concept of 'imaginative contemplation.' Drawing on key literature to provide a comprehensive and systematic study of the term, the book offers a unique analysis and definition of the connotations of the term, describing its aesthetic mentality and examining the issue of imaginative contemplation versus imagination in artistic creative thinking, especially as regards the characteristics of contingent thinking in aesthetics. It focuses on drawing parallels between imaginative contemplation and aesthetic emotions, aesthetic rationality, and artistic expression as well as aesthetic form. Examining the relationship between imaginative contemplation and the aesthetic configuration, the book provides a valuable introduction to aesthetic theory in Chinese philosophy and art.

In May 1992 political and social tensions in the former Soviet Republic of Tajikistan escalated to a devastating civil war, which killed approximately 40,000-100,000 people and displaced more than one million. The enormous challenge of the Soviet Union's disintegration compounded by inner-elite conflicts, ideological disputes and state failure triggered a downward spiral to one of the worst violent conflicts in the post-Soviet space. This book explains the causes of the Civil War in Tajikistan with a historical narrative recognizing long term structural causes of the conflict originating in the Soviet transformation of Central Asia since the 1920s as well as short-term causes triggered by Perestroika or Glasnost and the rapid dismantling of the Soviet Union. For the first time, a major publication on the Tajik Civil War addresses the many contested events, their sequences and how individuals and groups shaped the dynamics of events or responded to them. The book scrutinizes the role of regionalism, political Islam, masculinities and violent non-state actors in the momentous years between Perestroika and independence drawing on rich autobiographical accounts written by key actors of the unfolding conflict. Paired with complementary sources such as the media coverage and interviews, these autobiographies provide insights how Tajik politicians, field commanders and intellectuals perceived and rationalized the outbreak of the Civil War within the complex context of post-Soviet decolonization, Islamic revival and nationalist renaissance.

The string of military defeats during 1942 marked the end of British hegemony in Southeast Asia, finally destroying the myth of British imperial invincibility. The Japanese attack on Burma led to a hurried and often poorly organized evacuation of Indian and European civilians from the country. The evacuation was a public humiliation for the British and marked the end of their role in Burma."The Evacuation of Civilians from Burma" investigates the social and political background to the evacuation, and the consequences of its failure. Utilizing unpublished letters, diaries, memoirs and official reports, Michael Leigh provides the first comprehensive account of the evacuation, analyzing its source in the structures of colonial society, fractured race relations and in the turbulent politics of colonial Burma.

A study at many levels of Scott's long poem Coming to Jakarta, a book-length response to a midlife crisis triggered in part by the author's initial inability to share his knowledge and horror about American involvement in the great Indonesian massacre of 1965. Interviews with Ng supply fuller information about the poem's discussions of: a) how this psychological trauma led to an explorations of violence in American society and then, after a key recognition, in the poet himself; b) the poem's look at east-west relations through the lens of the yin-yang, spiritual-secular doubleness of the human condition; c) how the process of writing the poem led to the recovery of memories too threatening at first to be retained by his normal presentational self, and d) the mystery of right action, guided by the Bhagavad Gita and the maxim in the Gospel of Thomas that "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you." Led by the interviews to greater self-awareness, Scott then analyses his poem as also an elegy, not just for the dead in Indonesia, but "for the passing of the Sixties era, when so many of us imagined that a Movement might achieve major changes for a better America." Subsequent chapters develop how human doubleness can lead to an inner tension between the needs of politics and the needs of poetry, and how some poetry can serve as a non-violent higher politics, contributing to the evolution of human culture and thus our "second nature." The book also reproduces a Scott prose essay, inspired by the poem, on the U.S. involvement in and support for the 1965 massacre. It then discusses how this essay was translated into Indonesian and officially banned by the Indonesian dictatorship, and how ultimately it and the poem helped inspire the ground-breaking films of Josh Oppenheimer that have led to the first official discussions in Indonesia of what happened in 1965.

A secret mission sends the author to Vietnam's Mekong Delta, the bread basket of old Indo - China. He uncovers a sophisticated enemy supply network unknown to our military hierarchy.

Using intelligence data covertly gathered in Cambodia and analyzed at the Center for Naval Analyses in Arlington, Virginia they discover and destroy Vietcong forces and interdict VC supply lines with a mixture of intrigue and romance.

A U. S. Naval story never told, complete with declassified maps from the Office of Naval Intelligence, and illuminating pictures of Saigon and archaic areas of the Delta taken by the author forty - six years ago, a depiction of "old Saigon" and real relationships between North and South Vietnam are related.

Headquartered in Saigon, the true interaction between our Navy and Army ( MACV ) brass couched in the background of wartime Saigon, often referred to as the "Paris of the Orient," and Washington, D. C. is insightfully told.