Japanese Cultural Nationalism: At Home and in the Asia-Pacific

In November 2001, the 15th annual conference of the New Zealand and Asian Studies Society (NZASIA), focused on the inherently contentious notion of Japanese cultural nationalism, inviting scholars from Australasia, Japan and China to address the theme according to their own specialist areas of research. The outcome is this specially edited collection of 18 papers, which are divided into two sections: Japanese cultural nationalism at home; and Japanese cultural nationalism in an Asia-Pacific context. Contents include National poetics and national identity by the distinguished scholar Sukehiro Hirakawa; Nitobe and Japanese nationalism by George Oshiro; Nation and region in the work of Dazai Osamu by Roy Starrs; and Japanese doctors’ (in)human experimentation in wartime China and nationalism in medicine by Nie Jing-Bao.