Transwar Asia

This volume considers the possibilities of the term 'transwar' to understand the history of Asia from the 1920s to the 1960s. Recently, scholars have challenged earlier studies that suggested a neat division between the pre- and postwar or colonial/postcolonial periods in the national histories of East Asia, instead assessing change and continuity across the divide of war. Taking this reconsideration further, Transwar Asia explores the complex processes by which prewar and colonial ideologies, practices, and institutions from the 1920s and 1930s were reconfigured during World War II and, crucially, in the two decades that followed, thus shaping the Asian Cold War and the processes of decolonization and nation state-formation. With contributions covering the transwar histories of China, Indonesia, Korea, Japan, the Philippines and Taiwan, the book addresses key themes such as authoritarianism, militarization, criminal rehabilitation, market controls, labor-regimes, and anti-communism. A transwar angle, the authors argue, sheds new light on the continuing problems that undergirded the formation of postwar nation-states and illuminates the political legacies that still shape the various regions in Asia up to the present.

This volume considers the possibilities of the term 'transwar' to understand the history of Asia from the 1920s to the 1960s. Recently, scholars have challenged earlier studies that suggested a neat division between the pre- and postwar or colonial/postcolonial periods in the national histories of East Asia, instead assessing change and continuity across the divide of war. Taking this reconsideration further, Transwar Asia explores the complex processes by which prewar and colonial ideologies, practices, and institutions from the 1920s and 1930s were reconfigured during World War II and, crucially, in the two decades that followed, thus shaping the Asian Cold War and the processes of decolonization and nation state-formation. With contributions covering the transwar histories of China, Indonesia, Korea, Japan, the Philippines and Taiwan, the book addresses key themes such as authoritarianism, militarization, criminal rehabilitation, market controls, labor-regimes, and anti-communism. A transwar angle, the authors argue, sheds new light on the continuing problems that undergirded the formation of postwar nation-states and illuminates the political legacies that still shape the various regions in Asia up to the present.

A capacious history of decolonization, from the decline of empires to the era of globalization Empires, until recently, were everywhere. They shaped borders, stirred conflicts, and set the terms of international politics. With the collapse of empire came a fundamental reorganization of our world. Decolonization unfolded across territories as well as within them. Its struggles became internationalized and transnational, as much global campaigns of moral disarmament against colonial injustice as local contests of arms. In this expansive history, Martin Thomas tells the story of decolonization and its intrinsic link to globalization. He traces the connections between these two transformative processes: the end of formal empire and the acceleration of global integration, market reorganization, cultural exchange, and migration. The End of Empires and a World Remade shows how profoundly decolonization shaped the process of globalization in the wake of empire collapse. In the second half of the twentieth century, decolonization catalyzed new international coalitions; it triggered partitions and wars; and it reshaped North-South dynamics. Globalization promised the decolonized greater access to essential resources, to wider networks of influence, and to worldwide audiences, but its neoliberal variant has reinforced economic inequalities and imperial forms of political and cultural influences. In surveying these two codependent histories across the world, from Latin America to Asia, Thomas explains why the deck was so heavily stacked against newly independent nations. Decolonization stands alongside the great world wars as the most transformative event of twentieth-century history. In The End of Empires and a World Remade, Thomas offers a masterful analysis of the greatest process of state-making (and empire-unmaking) in modern history.

This collection examines literature and film studies from the late colonial and early postcolonial periods in Taiwan and Korea, and highlights the similarities and differences of Taiwanese and Korean popular culture by focusing on the representation of gender, genre, state regulation, and spectatorship. Calling for the “de-colonializing” and “de–Cold Warring” of the two ex-colonies and anticommunist allies, the book places Taiwan and Korea side by side in a “trans-war” frame. Considering Taiwan–Korea relations along a new trans-war axis, the book focuses on the continuities between the late colonial period’s Asia-Pacific War and the consequent Korean War and the ongoing conflict between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, facilitated by Cold War power struggles. The collection also invites a meaningful transcolonial reconsideration of East Asian cultural and literary flows, beyond the conventional colonizer/colonized dichotomy and ideological antagonism. ​

This rich collection of essays offers a multi- and inter-disciplinary discussion of "trans-Asia" approaches from critical theory, historical studies, cultural studies to film studies. In doing so the authors lay down the groundwork for a more inclusive knowledge-production and fruitful transnational collaboration. The authors engage with the implications of “trans-Asia” using a range of empirical cases. At the heart of the book is a desire and attempt to give a grounded understanding of what “trans-Asia” approaches are by examining human mobilities, media culture flows and connections across Asia and beyond in four key aspects: cross-border flows and connections; inter-Asian comparison and referencing; transnational and de-nationalized approaches; and cross-border collaboration.

Writers and intellectuals in modern Japan have long forged dialogues across the boundaries separating the spheres of literature and thought. This book explores some of their most provocative connections in the volatile years of the 1920s to 1950s, revealing unexpected intersections of literature, ideas, and politics in a global transwar context.

Despite East Asia's economic growth, ghosts of history continue to trouble relations between the key countries of the region. Unhappy legacies of Japan's military expansion in pre-war Asia prompt on-going calls for apologies, while conflicts over ownership of cultural heritage cause friction between China and Korea, and no peace treaty has ever been signed to conclude the Korean War. For over a decade, the region's governments and non-government groups have sought to confront the ghosts of the past, and focusing particularly on popular culture and grassroots action, East Asia beyond the History Wars explores these East Asian approaches to historical reconciliation.

This broad-based study of Western-Asian relations considers images of and actions by the United States, along with Britain and Germany, in the course of dealings with Asian nations such as China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines. Other case studies focus on inter-Asian relations between Japan and Korea; China and Japan; and Thailand and Vietnam. The essays encompass a wide range of recent scholarship, including cultural, economic, demographic, and intellectual approaches to military and diplomatic themes. Western influence, primarily American, in Asia grew consistently during the 20th century. While interaction often occurred on unequal terms, this study reveals the ability of Asians to assert their agency in the face of such immense Western power. The collection as a whole offers a window on relations across the Pacific in numerous spheres of activity over the course of one hundred years. As such, it introduces and adds to our understanding of the depth and variety of trans-Pacific relations.

In Cold War Ruins Lisa Yoneyama argues that the efforts intensifying since the 1990s to bring justice to the victims of Japanese military and colonial violence have generated what she calls a "transborder redress culture." A product of failed post-World War II transitional justice that left many colonial legacies intact, this culture both contests and reiterates the complex transwar and transpacific entanglements that have sustained the Cold War unredressability and illegibility of certain violences. By linking justice to the effects of American geopolitical hegemony, and by deploying a conjunctive cultural critique—of "comfort women" redress efforts, state-sponsored apologies and amnesties, Asian American involvement in redress cases, the ongoing effects of the U.S. occupation of Japan and Okinawa, Japanese atrocities in China, and battles over WWII memories—Yoneyama helps illuminate how redress culture across Asia and the Pacific has the potential to bring powerful new and challenging perspectives on American exceptionalism, militarized security, justice, sovereignty, forgiveness, and decolonization.

Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface: The Asia Nobody Sees -- Acknowledgments -- 1 Mapping Risk in Asia -- 2 The Asian Miracle at Risk -- 3 The Goldilocks Dilemma -- 4 Asia's Mesdames Defarges -- 5 Why Can't We All Just Get Along? -- 6 Hic Sunt Dracones: The Clouds of War -- 7 Managing Risk in Asia -- Notes -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- X -- Y -- Z