Nationalism and Internationalism in Imperial Japan: Autonomy, Asian Brotherhood, or World Citizenship? - Brief Article - Book Review

Contemporary Review, Oct, 2003

Dick Stegewems, editor. RoufledgeCurzon. 60.00 [pounds sterling]. 255 pages. ISBN 0-700-71496-01. This collection of ten essays by a team of American, Australian, New Zealand and Japanese scholars looks at the tensions involved in modern Japan's struggle to combine her nationalist temperment with her role in the world.

The book is divided into three sections. The first, with two essays, forms a 'theoretical introduction' to the issues involved. The second, with four essays, looks at the Meiji and Taisho generations, that is the period up to the 1920s through examinations of Fukuzawa Yukichi, Tokutomi Soho, Nitobe Inazo and Ishii Kikujiro, and Yoshino Sakuzo. The third and final section, with four essays, looks at the early Showa generations, from the 1920s through Royama Masamichi, Ishibashi Tanzan, Shakai Taishuto and, finally the writings of Yokomitsu Riichi in which one sees the transformations in Japanese literature from the 1920s to the 1940s.