War and Militarism in Modern Japan : Issues of History and Identity

A considerable amount of writing has been published on Japan at war in the Second World War, and more recently scholars have been revisiting the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5; whereas this volume strives to examine Japan's twentieth-century approach to war and militarism in a wider perspective, bringing hitherto unexamined new themes and subject-matter under scrutiny up to the present day. Among the topics covered are The February 26 Incident in Theatre and Film, Ethnicity and Gender in Wartime Japanese Revue Theatre, Military Festivals and the Japanese Self-Defence Forces, Major Trends in Japanese Treatment of POWs in Modern Times, and Japan's 'Tug of War'after the Russian War. Published to mark the distinguished academic career of Ben-Ami Shillony, who retired in 2006, this volume also offers valuable new insights into the theme of the Japanese and the Jews, including the Story and Myth of Anne Frank and Sadako Sasaki, the involvement of Jewish scientists in the making of the atomic bomb, and Japan's Jewish Policy in the late 1930s. Table of Contents 8 Preface and Acknowledgements 10 List of Contributors 11 Note on Transliteration 15 Introduction 16 1 Japan’s Tug-of-War After the Russo-Japanese War 24 2 Facing a Dilemma: Japan’s Jewish Policy in the Late 1930s 37 3 Ethnicity and Gender in the Wartime Japanese Revue Theatre 54 4 ‘The Terrible Weapon of the Gravely Injured’ – Mishima Yukio’s Literature and the War 68 5 Reenacting a Failed Revolution: The February 26 Incident in Theatre and Film, 1960–1980 78 6 Imperial Japan and Its POWs: The Dilemma of Humaneness and National Identity 95 7 Japan’s Defeat in the Second World War: The Cultural Dimension 126 8 Jewish Scientists, Jewish Ethics and the Making of the Atomic Bomb 135 9 The Memory of the Second World War and the Essence of ‘New Japan’: The Parliamentary Debate Over Japan’s Democratic Constitution 144 10 Lives Divided in the Second World War: The Individual and the Master Narrative of War 156 11 Sadako Sasaki and Anne Frank: Myths in Japanese and Israeli Memory of the Second World War 173 12 Death and the Japanese Self-Defence Forces: Anticipation, Deployment and Cultural Scripts 187 13 A Fragile Balance between ‘Normalization’ and the Revival of Nationalistic Sentiments 202 14 The Effect of Japanese Colonial Brutality on Shaping Korean Identity: An Analysis of a Prison Turned Memorial Site in Seoul 214 Bibliography 230 Index 252 9781905246854 BRILL NV