War and National Reinvention

About this book

"In the first full-length study of Japan in the Great War, Dickinson highlights the profound impact of the 1914 to 1919 years on Japan. Although the Japanese escaped the physical destruction experienced by their European counterparts, evidence of the bankruptcy of the old order spawned political turmoil in Tokyo that would, as in Europe, ultimately invite another war. The disintegration of modern Japan's foremost national model, Imperial Germany, aggravated a tumultuous Japanese domestic debate over national identity that generated a renewed drive for national power in the 1930s." "By linking the current fascination with cultural "invention" among social and cultural historians with the traditional focus of diplomatic history on international affairs, Dickinson offers an alternative explanation for Japan's modern wars. Japanese continental aims in the twentieth century become here less a reactive exercise in national defense than an active campaign to "reinvent" the state and Japanese society."--BOOK JACKET.