Re-understanding Japan: Chinese Perspectives, 1895–1945

To many Chinese, the rise and expansion of Japanese power during the years between the two Sino-Japanese wars (1895–1945) presented a paradox: With its successful modernization, Japan became a model to be emulated; yet as the country’s imperial ambitions on the continent grew, it posed an ever-increasing threat. Drawing on an extraordinary array of source materials, Lu Yan shows that this attraction to and apprehension of Japan prompted the Chinese to engage in a variety of long-term relationships with the Japanese.

Re-understanding Japan examines transnational and transcultural interactions between China and Japan during those five dramatic and tragic decades at the intimate level of personal lives and behavior. At the center of Lu’s inquiry are four diverse yet significant case studies: military strategist Jiang Baili, literary critic and essayist Zhou Zuoren, Guomindang leader Dai Jitao, and romantic poet turned Communist Guo Moruo. In their public and private lives, these influential Chinese formed lasting ties with Japan and the Japanese. While their writings reached the Chinese public through the print mass media and served to enhance popular understanding of Japan and its culture, their activities in political, cultural, and diplomatic affairs paralleledsignificant turns in Sino-Japanese relations.

Based on archival documents, personal memoirs, correspondence, interviews, and contemporary literary works, Re-understanding Japan delineates diverse approaches in Chinese efforts to engage Japan in China’s modern reforms.

• Lu Yan, Author

  Professor Lu Yan is associate professor of History at the University of New Hampshire. She is currently the Coordinator of Asian Studies Program at UNH. She has been awarded a prestigious ACLS fellowship and designated an International Studies Fellow of the SSRC. Her first book, Re-understanding
  Japan: Chinese Perspectives, 1895-1945, was published by the University of
  Hawaii Press, and her scholarly writings have appeared in edited books, including China in Meiji Japan, New Horizons of Studies on Sino-Japanese Relations (in Japanese), The Cold War in Asia, as well as journals such as Modern China, Frontiers of History in China, Sino-Japanese Studies, International Historical Review, Canadian Journal of History, and Chinese Historical Review.