Rotem Kowner, Professor of Japanese history and culture at the University of Haifa, Israel. His research has focused on the social and racial nexus between Japan and the West since the sixteenth century as well as on wartime behavior and attitudes in modern Japan.Walter Demel, Professor of early modern history at the University of the Armed Forces Munich, Germany. He has mainly published on the Bavarian and German politics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, on the history of the European nobility, and on the relations between Europe and East Asia, particularly the perceptions of China and Japan.

"In der historischen Forschung zum Thema Rassismus spielte Ostasien bisher kaum eine Rolle. Der vorliegende Band, Ergebnis eines mehrjährigen, von der German- Israeli-Foundation geförderten Projektes, schließt diese Forschungslücke … Insgesamt ist der Band ausgezeichnet ediert und gut lesbar und wird zweifellos bis auf Weiteres das Standard- werk zum Thema Rasse in Ostasien bleiben. Wer an der historischen Entwicklung des Rassebegriffs interessiert ist und einen Blick über den europäischen Rahmen hinaus werfen möchte, dem sei dieser Band wärmstens empfohlen." ["Within the historical research on the topic of racism, East Asia has barely played any role. This volume, the outcome of a multi-year project closes this research lacuna … Overall, the volume is superbly edited and easy to read and will undoubtedly remain, until further notice, the standard work on the subject of race in East Asia. For those interested in the historical development of the concept of race and wish to go beyond the European framework, this volume is highly recommended."] – Prof. Sven Saaler, in: Historische Zeitschrift 299 (2014), pp. 140-141"...its real strong point is its variety, with papers probing such interesting and understudied topics as the East in Russian modernism, Korea in European travel writing, utopian multiracial notions in nineteenth-century China, and the complexities of race in the Japanese colonial empire before WWII ... the essays themselves are uniformly excellent and tend to provide information not otherwise accessible to Anglophone readers. The scholarly summaries are very accomplished and provide a wealth of material for understanding that race is neither a fixed nor an atemporal construct, nor is it one that can be simply transferred from Western contexts onto Eastern ones." – Michael Keevak, in: Asian Ethnicity 15/4 (2014), pp. 584-585 [DOI: 10.1080/14631369.2014.939338]"[T]hese books help us to understand how prominent a factor race was in armed conflicts in twentieth-century East Asia. [...] breaks new grounds in the field of race studies in that it is devoted to race from entirely East Asian perspectives (and there are many!)." - Laura Hostetler, in: Sino-Western Cultural Relations Journal 37 (2015), 74-84

• List of Illustrations and TablesConventionsPreface1. Modern East Asia and the Rise of Racial Thought: Possible Links, Unique Features, and Unsettled IssuesRotem Kowner and Walter DemelPART I: WESTERN RACE THEORIES, RACIAL IMAGES AND RACISM2. Early Modern European Divisions of Mankind and East Asians, 1500-175050Walter Demel and Rotem Kowner3. How the “Mongoloid Race” Came into Being: Late Eighteenth-Century Constructions of East Asians in EuropeWalter Demel4. Between Contempt and Fear: Western Racial Constructions of East Asians since 1800Rotem Kowner5. “A Very Great Gulf”: Late Victorian British Diplomacy and Race in East AsiaT.G. Otte6. Pan-Mongolians at Twilight: East Asia and Race in Russian Modernism, 1890-1921Susanna Soojung Lim7. National Identity and Race in Post-Revolutionary Russia: Pil’niak’s Travelogues from Japan and ChinaAlexander Bukh8. Class, Race, Floating Signifier: American Media Imagine the Chinese, 1870-1900Lenore Metrick-Chen9. Racism for Beginners: Constructions of Chinese in Twentieth Century Belgian ComicsIdesbald Goddeeris10. Race, Imperialism, and Reconstructing Selves: Late Nineteenth Century Korea in European Travel LiteratureHuajeong Seok11. Race, Culture and the Reaction to the Japanese Victory of 1905 in the English-Speaking WorldPhilip Towle PART II: EAST ASIAN RACE THEORIES, RACIAL POLICIES AND RACISM12. A Certain Whiteness of Being: Chinese Perceptions of Self by the Beginning of European ContactDon J. Wyatt13. Racial Discourse and Utopian Visions in Nineteenth Century ChinaSufen Sophia Lai 14. The Discourse of Race in Twentieth-Century ChinaFrank Dikötter15. Racist South Korea? Diverse but not Tolerant of DiversityGi-Wook Shin16. Skin Color Melancholy in Modern Japan: Male Elites' Racial Experiences Abroad, 1880s-1950sAyu Majima17. Anatomically Speaking: The Kubo Incident and the Paradox of Race in Colonial KoreaHoi-eun Kim18. Who Classified Whom, and for What Purpose? The “Japanese” in Northeast China in the Age of EmpireMariko Asano Tamanoi19. Race and International Law in Japan’s New Order in East Asia, 1938-1945Urs Matthias Zachmann20. East Asia’s “Melting-Pot”: Reevaluating Race Relations in Japan’s Colonial Empire583Yukiko Koshiro21. Categorical Confusion: President Obama as a Case Study of Racialized Practices in Contemporary JapanChristine R. YanoContributorsBibliographyIndex