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Asian History



  • Can Japan-Korea Relations Resolve Historical Disputes?

    The government of South Korea has dropped its demand for Japanese companies to pay victims of forced labor during World War II. Many Koreans have called the concession a national humiliation, and some surviving victims say they won't accept compensation from Korean sources. 



  • Salman Rushdie Changed Everything

    by Siva Vaidhyanathan

    The novelist's creative brilliance and critical acclaim signaled a moment for south Asian people around the world to see themselves outside the frame of colonialism and to grapple with the subcontinent's ethnic and religious fissures. 



  • Eighty Years Ago, Japan Assaulted More Than Pearl Harbor

    by Mindy L. Kotler

    Memorializing the attacks on the American military base at Pearl Harbor often obscures the attacks against the wider Pacific launched by the Japanese on December 7, 1941, attacks with consequences that endure today. 


  • A Celebrity Apology and the Reality of Taiwan

    by Evan Dawley

    Actor John Cena's blunder into the Taiwan-China controversy should be an opportunity for Americans to learn more about the history of this conflict and of an independent Taiwanese identity that has been shaped by Japanese colonization, Chinese nationalism, war, and the Communist revolution. 



  • Mexico Faces Up to Uneasy Anniversary of Chinese Massacre

    The 1911 massacre of Chinese laborers in the town of Torreón shows that Asian migrants were subjected to mass violence throughout the Americas. The Mexican government and society have only recently begun to acknowledge this and other incidents.