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Japanese 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. 



  • Can We Condemn One Empire Without Affirming Another?

    by Moon-Ho Jung

    The experience of left-wing Japanese Americans, who rejected Japanese imperialism while being oppressed by American nationalism, shows that war forces an artificial binary of national allegiance. 


  • The Japanese Surrender in 1945 is Still Poorly Understood

    by Jeremy Kuzmarov and Roger Peace

    American diplomats and military leadership in 1945 believed Japan was close to a negotiated surrender without the use of the atomic bomb, a history that has since been replaced by the myth that the bomb saved lives. 



  • The Significance of Yasuke, the Black Samurai

    by Warren A. Stanislaus

    "While media coverage of Afro-Japanese encounters overwhelmingly focuses on incidents of racism or misunderstandings, Yasuke’s interaction with Japan has helped illuminate a rich but overlooked history of Afro-Japanese connectivity." 



  • Why Japan Forfeited Hosting the 1940 Games

    by Paul Droubie

    Japan's forfeiture of the games amid rising international and internal tensions shows that the Olympics have always been a vehicle for the promotion of national elites' agendas, often at the expense of popular domestic concerns. 



  • The History the Japanese Government Is Trying to Erase

    by Chelsea Szendi Schieder

      An academic involved in the recent "comfort women" controversy while teaching in Japan warns "In failing to teach what the wartime state did, the Japanese government only emboldens the forces of misogyny and racism and cultivates new generations of violence."



  • The Tokyo Moment: What Developing Cities Can Learn From The Postwar Japanese Capital

    by Ben Bensal

    "Studying postwar Tokyo helps historicize the discourse on megacities, which is still in its infancy. While there are important similarities between today’s megacities in terms of their size, organizational complexity, and socio-economic challenges, there are important contextual differences that are best assessed using a historical approach."



  • The Lone Woman of Kokura

    by Nyri A. Bakkalian

    Who was the Lone Woman in the Kokura Castle town ruins that day in 1866? We don’t know her name, though we know where she died in Kokura.