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Rating: 
Summary: An excellent treatment of a complex subject
Review: Frank Dikötter has put together an excellent collection of articles about the development of racial and national identities in China and Japan. Starting from where Western scholars fear to tread but need to go, he asserts in the introduction that dismissing the development of racial (or racist) attitudes in Asia as the mere extension of Western ethnocentrism is not only short-sighted, but dangerous. Especially as we enter the 21st century as globalization brings nations and ideologies closer together, it is important to understand the historically specific formations of national and racial identity that determines individual identity formation. Splitting the book into two halves, with articles about China leading off the book, the varied articles and analyses are quite insighful and theoretically rigorous. This is a good first introduction to the subject, and many of the authors in the book can be found elsewhere, some of them having written their own books based on their lines of research. Kosaku Yoshino, Frank Dikötter, Louise Young, and David Goodman have all written works worthy of buying outright. Of particular interest are the Japan chapters, which outline the development of ideas of racial particularism as the nation reconstructed itself in its program of modernization, the place of the Ainu "other" in this process, the distancing and stigmatizing of Chinese kanbun throughout this process, as well as the turn Japanese ideology took after the forced annexation of Manchukuo. For a detailed exploration of the Chinese formation of national identity, this is a good book, but it goes without saying (although I clearly am) that one should own a copy of Dikötter's The Discourse of Race in Modern China. Perfect accompanying works to be read alongside this one are the aforementioned book on China, the edited volume Making Majorities, by Dru Gladney, as well as Cultural Nationalism in East Asia, by Harumi Befu. The big man on campus, as it were, is Kosaku Yoshino, who wrote Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary Japan. If you are a scholar of nationalism in Asia, you cannot be without these books. Also of interest would be Michael Robinson's Cultural Nationalism in Korea, any and all works by John Dower, beginning with War Without Mercy, and the book Colonialism and Nationalism in Asian Cinema. As a graduate student specializing in this area, and having just passed my qualifying exams in the area of Nationalism in East Asia, I can say that I have scoured bibliographies and booklists far and wide. This book, along with the others mentioned above, will provide a solid start for the interested scholar.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent treatment of a complex subject
Review: Frank Dikötter has put together an excellent collection of articles about the development of racial and national identities in China and Japan. Starting from where Western scholars fear to tread but need to go, he asserts in the introduction that dismissing the development of racial (or racist) attitudes in Asia as the mere extension of Western ethnocentrism is not only short-sighted, but dangerous. Especially as we enter the 21st century as globalization brings nations and ideologies closer together, it is important to understand the historically specific formations of national and racial identity that determines individual identity formation. Splitting the book into two halves, with articles about China leading off the book, the varied articles and analyses are quite insighful and theoretically rigorous. This is a good first introduction to the subject, and many of the authors in the book can be found elsewhere, some of them having written their own books based on their lines of research. Kosaku Yoshino, Frank Dikötter, Louise Young, and David Goodman have all written works worthy of buying outright. Of particular interest are the Japan chapters, which outline the development of ideas of racial particularism as the nation reconstructed itself in its program of modernization, the place of the Ainu "other" in this process, the distancing and stigmatizing of Chinese kanbun throughout this process, as well as the turn Japanese ideology took after the forced annexation of Manchukuo. For a detailed exploration of the Chinese formation of national identity, this is a good book, but it goes without saying (although I clearly am) that one should own a copy of Dikötter's The Discourse of Race in Modern China. Perfect accompanying works to be read alongside this one are the aforementioned book on China, the edited volume Making Majorities, by Dru Gladney, as well as Cultural Nationalism in East Asia, by Harumi Befu. The big man on campus, as it were, is Kosaku Yoshino, who wrote Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary Japan. If you are a scholar of nationalism in Asia, you cannot be without these books. Also of interest would be Michael Robinson's Cultural Nationalism in Korea, any and all works by John Dower, beginning with War Without Mercy, and the book Colonialism and Nationalism in Asian Cinema. As a graduate student specializing in this area, and having just passed my qualifying exams in the area of Nationalism in East Asia, I can say that I have scoured bibliographies and booklists far and wide. This book, along with the others mentioned above, will provide a solid start for the interested scholar.
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