Critical Readings on Japan, 1906-1948: Countering Japan’s Agenda and the Communist Menace in East Asia

The second series of Critical Readings offers in ten volumes a selection of sixty-six English-language pamphlets, press and journal articles, many extremely rare. This selection of valuable primary media history resources - published between 1906 and 1948 - takes Japan’s agenda from the aftermath of victory against Russia and a free hand in Manchuria through Japan’s blitzkrieg on Asia to the ignominy and ruin of 1945, and beyond to the ousting of the Guomindang and the approaching unification of China under Mao.

Volumes 9 and 10 demonstrate that even among the most vociferous critics of Japan’s agenda in East Asia, the greater perceived enemy in the 1920s was the Communist Party of China. They show that opposition to the Communists did not mean signing up to Japan’s agenda, despite Japan’s self-appointed mission to rid Asia of the Communist menace, as exemplified in the selection for the companion collection, also edited by Peter O’Connor, Japanese Propaganda: Selected Readings, Series 1 and 2.

Co-published with Edition Synapse, Tokyo. NO SALES RIGHTS IN JAPAN

Peter O’Connor, Ph.D. (2006) in history at SOAS, University of London, teaches at Musashino and Waseda universities, Tokyo. He has published extensively on the transnational media history of 20th century East Asia.
His The English-language Press Networks of East Asia, 1918-1945 was issued by Global Oriental in September 2010. More recently, he completed, as series editor, Series 2 of Critical Readings on Japan, 1906-1948: Countering Japan’s Agenda and the Communist Menace in East Asia, (June 2011), and thus the last ten volumes of the 40-volume collection The Representation of Japan in Modern East Asia, 1872-1948, to be published in June 2011.