Nation-Empire: Ideology and Rural Youth Mobilization in Japan and Its Colonies
By Sayaka Chatani
Ebook618 pages13 hours
About this ebook
By the end of World War II, hundreds of thousands of young men in the Japanese colonies, in particular Taiwan and Korea, had expressed their loyalty to the empire by volunteering to join the army. Why and how did so many colonial youth become passionate supporters of Japanese imperial nationalism? And what happened to these youth after the war? Nation-Empire investigates these questions by examining the long-term mobilization of youth in the rural peripheries of Japan, Taiwan, and Korea. Personal stories and village histories vividly show youth’s ambitions, emotions, and identities generated in the shifting conditions in each locality. At the same time, Sayaka Chatani unveils an intense ideological mobilization built from diverse contexts—the global rise of youth and agrarian ideals, Japan’s strong drive for assimilation and nationalization, and the complex emotions of younger generations in various remote villages.
Nation-Empire engages with multiple historical debates. Chatani considers metropole-colony linkages, revealing the core characteristics of the Japanese Empire; discusses youth mobilization, analyzing the Japanese seinendan (village youth associations) as equivalent to the Boy Scouts or the Hitler Youth; and examines society and individual subjectivities under totalitarian rule. Her book highlights the shifting state-society transactions of the twentieth-century world through the lens of the Japanese Empire, inviting readers to contend with a new approach to, and a bold vision of, empire study.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration and Translation
Introduction: Nation-Empire as Global and Local His-
tory
Part 1 THE SO-CALLED INNER TERRITORIES
1. National Trends
2. From Mobilization to the Social Mobility Complex
3. Totalitarian Japanization
Interlude: Okinawa’s Place in the Nation-Empire
Part 2 THE SO-CALLED OUTER TERRITORIES
4. Colonial Intellectuals
5. Finding Rural Youth in Taiwan
6. The Emotional Basis for Japanization
7. Model Rural Youth in Korean Villages
8. Opportunities and Loopholes
Part 3 CONSEQUENCES
9. As Young Pillars of the Nation-Empire
Epilogue: Back in Villages
Notes
On the Archives and Sources
Index
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LanguageEnglish
PublisherCornell University Press
Release dateDec 15, 2018
ISBN9781501730771
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Nation-Empire: Ideology and Rural Youth Mobilization in Japan and Its Colonies (Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University) Hardcover – Illustrated, December 15, 2018
by Sayaka Chatani (Author)
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By the end of World War II, hundreds of thousands of young men in the Japanese colonies, in particular Taiwan and Korea, had expressed their loyalty to the empire by volunteering to join the army. Why and how did so many colonial youth become passionate supporters of Japanese imperial nationalism? And what happened to these youth after the war? Nation-Empire investigates these questions by examining the long-term mobilization of youth in the rural peripheries of Japan, Taiwan, and Korea. Personal stories and village histories vividly show youth’s ambitions, emotions, and identities generated in the shifting conditions in each locality. At the same time, Sayaka Chatani unveils an intense ideological mobilization built from diverse contexts―the global rise of youth and agrarian ideals, Japan’s strong drive for assimilation and nationalization, and the complex emotions of younger generations in various remote villages.
Nation-Empire engages with multiple historical debates. Chatani considers metropole-colony linkages, revealing the core characteristics of the Japanese Empire; discusses youth mobilization, analyzing the Japanese seinendan (village youth associations) as equivalent to the Boy Scouts or the Hitler Youth; and examines society and individual subjectivities under totalitarian rule. Her book highlights the shifting state-society transactions of the twentieth-century world through the lens of the Japanese Empire, inviting readers to contend with a new approach to, and a bold vision of, empire study.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
Chatani (history, National Univ. of Singapore) has written a groundbreaking study of how and why young men in rural areas of Japan and its then-colonies, Taiwan and Korea, became emotionally invested in the project of Japanese nationalism and militarism. Providing a new perspective on the emotional attraction of the Japanese Empire and the opportunities it provided to the youth in the colonies, this superb study will be required reading for those interested in modern Japanese history, Japanese empire-building, and imperialism and colonialism.
― Choice
Nation-Empire contributes to a number of fields and should be widely read outside of East Asian history... while there are other works that address the local-global dynamic as it applies to colonialism in East Asia and elsewhere, Chatani raises the bar by adding several layers to both the local and "global" without slighting one over the other.
― PACIFIC AFFAIRS
Nation-Empire will already be of tremendous value to any scholar seeking to undertake comparative research on empires and global youth culture, and we can expect that this book will remain the definitive work on youth in the Japanese Empire for a great many years to come.
― The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth
Chatani's study impresses greatly in its in-depth investigation of three locations across the empire, making excellent use of primary sources and secondary scholarship in four languages. This range is what enables her penetrating analytical comparisons of regional and local variations.
― Journal of Japanese Studies
Review
Chatani answer a vexing question of colonialism: why rural youth in Japan, Taiwan, and Korea actively engaged in colonial and wartime initiatives, including military service. This history transforms our understanding of Japan as a "nation-empire" and makes a valuable contribution to the world history of youth.
-- Lori Watt, Associate Professor of History, Washington University in St. Louis, and author of When Empire Comes Home
About the Author
Sayaka Chatani is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the National University of Singapore.
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Product details
Publisher : Cornell University Press; Illustrated edition (December 15, 2018)
Language : English
Hardcover : 366 pages
#71 in South Korean History
#760 in Japanese History (Books)
#5,310 in World War II History (Books)
Customer Reviews: 4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 3 ratings
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Top review from the United States
C.S.S.
5.0 out of 5 stars Ambitious in scope, clearly explained
Reviewed in the United States on September 2, 2019
There are many studies about urban modernity in Japanese cities and even in its colonial cities -- but what about colonial urban modernity? How did that figure in forming an empire? And how did youth participate in this kind of modernity? Chatani's book introduces the reader to an amazing set of research results based on interviews, and archives both official and personal, and presents clear and concise conclusions that will interest scholars of empire, of nationalism, of wartime mobilization, and youth.
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