Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism

"This book is a classic. It’s launched 1,000 dissertations and monographs. There’s something about it that is unsurpassed in the way that it brings together different sides of Japan’s imperial transformation as it unfolded in the 1930s. It covers political, military and social aspects. The breadth is quite incredible. There’s this notion that the 1930s military expansion into northeast China, into Manchuria, comes to be seen as a solution to different domestic problems in Japan—political, military, and social problems connected with class conflict. There’s a way in which Manchuria comes to appear as a kind of utopia for many different constituencies in Japanese society, for many different reasons. This book looks at the many layers of meaning that the Manchurian intervention takes on during this period. In 1931 the Manchurian incident becomes the pretext for full-scale expansion into northeast China. That leads to Japan setting up a puppet state there, Manchukuo. This is outside what are considered Japan’s borders today, but Louise Young does a great job showing how it is connected to and facilitates all kinds of very important domestic changes within Japan—related to the mass media, politics, and consumerism. In many respects, these originate in the changes brought on by expansion into northeast China."