Nation-Empire

Sayaka Chatani is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the National University of Singapore.

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)

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsNote on Transliteration and TranslationIntroduction: Nation-Empire as Global and Local HistoryPart 1: THE SO-CALLED INNER TERRITORIES1. National Trends2. From Mobilization to the Social Mobility Complex3. Totalitarian JapanizationInterlude: Okinawa's Place in the Nation-EmpirePart 2: THE SO-CALLED OUTER TERRITORIES4. Colonial Intellectuals5. Finding Rural Youth in Taiwan6. The Emotional Basis for Japanization7. Model Rural Youth in Korean Villages8. Opportunities and LoopholesPart 3: CONSEQUENCES9. As Young Pillars of the Nation-EmpireEpilogue: Back in VillagesNotesOn the Archives and Sources