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Toward a History Beyond Borders

Toward a History Beyond Borders

Contentious Issues in Sino–Japanese Relations

Edited by Daqing Yang, Jie Liu, Hiroshi Mitani, and Andrew Gordon
Translated by Erik Esselstrom, Joshua A. Fogel, Matthew Fraleigh, Timothy S. George, Konrad M. Lawson, and Louisa Rubinfien
Edited and translated by Daqing Yang

ISBN 9780674062566

Publication date: 04/16/2012

This volume brings to English-language readers the results of an important long-term project of historians from China and Japan addressing contentious issues in their shared modern histories. Originally published simultaneously in Chinese and Japanese in 2006, the thirteen essays in this collection focus renewed attention on a set of political and historiographical controversies that have steered and stymied Sino-Japanese relations from the mid-nineteenth century through World War II to the present.

These in-depth contributions explore a range of themes, from prewar diplomatic relations and conflicts, to wartime collaboration and atrocity, to postwar commemorations and textbook debates—all while grappling with the core issue of how history has been researched, written, taught, and understood in both countries. In the context of a wider trend toward cross-national dialogues over historical issues, this volume can be read as both a progress report and a case study of the effort to overcome contentious problems of history in East Asia.

Praise

  • Yang and his coeditors have produced a truly groundbreaking collection of 13 essays that represent the results of an important, long-term project by Chinese and Japanese historians to address contentious issues in the two countries’ shared modern histories… First published simultaneously in Chinese and Japanese in 2006 and now available in a very felicitous English translation, these essays provide unique and comprehensive looks at the wide range of issues that have bedeviled relations between these two Asian neighbors.

    —M. D. Ericson, Choice

Authors

  • Daqing Yang is Associate Professor of History and International Affairs, George Washington University.
  • Daqing Yang is Associate Professor of History and International Affairs, George Washington University.
  • Jie Liu is Professor of History at Waseda University.
  • Hiroshi Mitani is Professor of History at the University of Tokyo.
  • Andrew Gordon is Lee and Juliet Folger Fund Professor of History, Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, Harvard University.
  • Joshua A. Fogel is Canada Research Chair and Professor of History, York University.
  • Matthew Fraleigh is Associate Professor of East Asian Literature and Culture at Brandeis University.
  • Timothy S. George is Professor of History at the University of Rhode Island.

Book Details

  • 488 pages
  • 6 x 9 inches
  • Harvard University Asia Center

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