History

Essays should have a clear argument supported by evidence from the readings (https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B3D5tcB4swW_WmVTeXF4LVdWWVE?usp=sharing ). While it is fine to state your personal opinion on these questions, please be sure that you support your opinion with historical evidence. The best answers will have an argument and will be very detailed. The answer should have a beginning, middle and an end, and will probably be 400 words.

1. What role does the West play in shaping modern East Asia? How does this role change over time (if it does change). In your opinion is the role of the West a net positive or a net negative? Why?

2. What are the merits and demerits of the Champion of the East and the Gentleman of Western Learning’s arguments in Discourse of Three Drunkards on Government. Which view do you support? Why?

3. What is the nature of nationalism in the Japanese and Chinese contexts? What does it stem from? How do nationalistic sentiments change in the first three decades of the twentieth century in East Asia?

4. Describe the changes in Japan-Chinese relations over time beginning in 1895 up through 1937. In what ways do relations change? What factors force them to change?

5. By the 1920s, Japan had already become an important world power, while China remained mired in warlord politics and political factionalism. How do you account for the differences in China and Japan? What factors helped facilitate Japan’s “rise”?

6. Evaluate the arguments made by Japanese leaders regarding Pan Asianism from the early 20th century up through the creation of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. What was attractive about these sentiments for many people in East Asia? How do you yourself feel about the way the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was portrayed?

7. How did Chiang Kaishek rise to prominence in China in the 1920s? What was the legitimacy of Chiang Kaishek’s Nationalist government based upon? How do the campaigns against the Chinese Communist Party fit into this?

8. How do you view Wang Jingwei? Was he a collaborator as he is commonly portrayed in China or is he a patriot whose reputation has been slandered since the end of the war? To answer this question, you must address the differences between collaborators and resisters in the wartime period. What constitutes these two categories? What problems are there in using these two turns of phrase?

9. Scholars have suggested that the Pacific War between Japan and the United States was inevitable, but there is a considerable amount of disagreement about when it became inevitable. What single point do you consider to be the “point of no return” for the outbreak of the war? Please note in your response at least two other potential points and explain why you did not choose them.

Reading List: (https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B3D5tcB4swW_WmVTeXF4LVdWWVE?usp=sharing ).

Week 1

*John Dower, “Structures and Ideologies of Conquest” in MacKinnon, Lary, and Vogel, eds. China at War: Regions of China, 1937-1945 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press) 2007, 17-21

*Diana Lary, The Chinese People at War: Human Suffering and Social Transformation, 1937-1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2010), 1-14

Contact with the West and the Rise of Nations and Nationalism in Asia

*“The Revolutionary Movement” in Keith Schoppa, ed. Twentieth Century China: A History in Documents (New York: Oxford University Press) 2011, 20-26

* “Ethnicity and Modernity in the 1911 Revolution “in Henrietta Harrison China: Inventing the Nation (London: Arnold) 2001, 132-149

Week 2

The “Meiji Model:” State Centralization and Government Control

* “Saigo Takamori and the Samurai Spirit” and “Okubo Toshimichi and the Korean Question” in Source of Japanese Tradition, vol. 2 (New York: Columbia University Press), 147-155

- Discourse of Three Drunkards first half

Nationalism, National Crisis and the Nationalist Party in China

* Lu Xun, “A Madman’s Diary” in The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature (New York: Columbia University Press 1995), 8-15

*“Spirit of the May Fourth Movement” in Patricia Ebrey, ed. Chinese Civilization, A Sourcebook (New York: Free Press) 1993, 360-363

* “Politics of Power: General von Falkenhausen’s Advice to Chiang Kaishek, 1936” in Cheng, Lestz, Spence, eds. Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection (New York: Norton) 1999, 286-289

* “Chiang Kai-shek – The People’s Choice?” In Theodore White and Annalee Jacoby, Thunder Out of China (New York: William Sloane Associates) 1946, 118-131

Week 3

Empire and the Rise of Japanese Militarism

-“Chapter 3, The Military: Authoritarian and Irrational” in Ienaga Saburo, The Pacific War 1931-1945 (New York: Pantheon Books) 1978

-“Japan on the Mukden Incident” in the Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection, 279-281

-“Japan’s Expansion: A satirical poem”, “Japan defended at the Chamber of Commerce” in Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection, 281-286

- “East Asian Federation”, “The Spiritual Basis of Asian Revolution and Unity,”, “Japan as Economic Leader of Asia”, in Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in World War II: Selected Documents (New York: Oxford University Press) 1975, 3-8, 36-40, 48-54

- “First Encounters” in Hilda Kang, ed. Under the Black Umbrella: Voices from Colonial Korea, 1910-1945 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press) 2001, 6-14

- “Shouts of Independence” in Under the Black Umbrella, 17-23

- Louise Young, “Imagined Empire: The Cultural Construction of Manchukuo” in The Japanese Wartime Empire: 1931-1945 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press) 1996, 71-96

Week 4

Chiang Kaishek and the Formation of a United Front in China

-“Political and Military Realities in Twentieth Century China: A History in Documents, 78-83

- “The Students Demonstrate, December 16, 1935”, “Xi’an 1936: the Generals’ Demands and Chiang Kai-shek’s Reply”, in Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection, 304-313

- “On War with Japan” in Edgar Snow, Red Star Over China (New York: Grove Press 1968), 106-113

- Finish Discourse

The Outbreak of the War: From the Marco Polo Bridge to a Stalemate in Central China

- “Japan at War” in Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection, 314-324

- “The Rape of Nanjing, Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection,324-330

- Diana Lary, “A Ravaged Place” in MacKinnon and Lary, eds. Scars of War: the Impact of Warfare on Modern China (Vancouver: UBC Press) 2001, 98-116

- “Battle Lines in China” , “ I wanted to Build a Greater East Asia”, in Japan at War: An Oral History, 29-44, 50-55

- Begin Factories of Death, 1-74

Week 5

Resistance v. Collaboration in Occupied China

*“Generalissimo Jiang on National Identity” in Chinese Civilization: a Sourcebook, 401-404

*“Wang Jingwei : On Collaboration” in Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection, 330-333

*“War, Nationalism and Identity” in China: Inventing the Nation, 207-223

*“Introduction” in Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (New York: BasicBooks) 1997, 3-16

Week 6

The Retreat to the Southwest and the Making of ‘Free China’

*“Chungking, a Point in Time” in White and Jacoby eds Thunder Out of China, 3-19

*“Bombs in Yishan” in Lau and Goldblatt, eds. Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature (New York: Columbia University Press 2007) 633-638

* “Bombs Don’t Discriminate” in Flath and Smith, eds. Beyond Suffering: Recounting War in Modern China (Vancouver: UBC Press) 2011, 59-79

* Li Danke, Echoes of Chongqing: Women in Wartime China (Urbana: University of Illinois Press) 2010, 88-93

- Factories of Death, 75-177

Pearl Harbor and the Beginning of the War in the Pacific

* “Tojo on the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”,“Tojo Greets the Greater East Asia Conference, in Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in World War II, 78-81, 88-93

* “A Failure of Diplomacy” in Japan at War: an Oral History, 90-95

* “The Justificiation for War” , “The Declaration of War” , “The War Goal” in Source of Japanese Tradition, vol. 2, 288-298

Week 7

War, Race and the Mobilization of the Japanese Empire

*“Chapter 3” in Richard Kim, Lost Names: Scenes from a Korean Boyhood (Berkeley:University of California Press) 1998

* “Patterns of a Race War” in John Dower War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon Books) 1996, 3-14 [don’t have]

* “Imperial Army Betrayed” in Fujitani, White, Yoneyama, eds. Perilous Memories: the Asia-Pacific War(s) (Durham, NC: Duke University Press) 2001 [don’t have]

* “Korean Guard” in Japan at War, 113-120

Week 8

Women and the War in East Asia

* “The Course and Conditions of the Establishment of the Military comfort Station System” in Yoshimi Yoshiaki Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military During World War II (New York: Columbia University Press) 2000, 42-75

* Ding Ling, “When I was in Xia village” Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature