新书： Popular Japanese Perceptions of Mao’s China

书名：That Distant Country Next Door: Popular Japanese Perceptions of Mao’s China

出版时间：May, 2019

出版社：Hawai'i: University of Hawai'i Press

作者：Erik Esselstrom

Hardback: $68.00

ISBN-13: 9780824876562

248 pages | 20 b&w illustrations

——朱生豪致宋清如

本书简介

Japan’s road to war in China in the 1930s–1940s is well known, as are the legacies of that conflict in the diplomatic disputes, territorial rows, and educational policy battles between Japan and China since the 1980s. Less understood is the nature of Japan-China relations in the intervening decades. How did a popular Japanese perception of China that facilitated imperial aggression become one that embraced restoring friendly diplomatic ties and cultivating mutually beneficial economic and cultural interactions? Exploring everyday Japanese impressions of the People’s Republic of China from the end of the U.S. Occupation in 1952 to normalization of Japan-China relations in 1972, this book analyzes representations of the PRC in Japanese print media and visual culture in connection with four topics: the 1954 visit to Japan by Minister of Health Li Dequan, China’s atomic weapons testing in 1964–1967, the Red Guard movement of the early Cultural Revolution years, and the culture of continental “rediscovery” in 1971–1972.

作者简介

Erik Esselstrom is Associate Professor of East Asian history and he has been a member of the UVM faculty since 2004. His primary interests in both research and teaching focus on modern political and cultural relations between Japan and China, and Esselstrom’s current book project, tentatively titled That Distant Country Next Door: Popular Japanese Perceptions of Mao’s China, explores the ways in which Chinese society during the 1950s and 1960s was represented in popular Japanese visual and print media.  His first book, Crossing Empire's Edge: Foreign Ministry Police and Japanese Expansionism in Northeast Asia, was published in 2009 as the inaugural volume of the 'World of East Asia' series at the University of Hawai'i Press, and he has also published research articles in Modern Asian Studies, Radical History Review, Intelligence and National Security, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Jinbun Gakuho (in Japanese), The Journal of Cold War Studies, and The Journal of Asian Studies.  Professor Esselstrom has worked collaboratively with Japanese, Chinese, and Korean scholars at the Institute for Research in Humanities of Kyoto University and at Waseda University in Tokyo. Most recently, he taught and conducted research in 2012 as a visiting Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Hitotsubashi University in Japan, and he also spent the summer of 2015 in Tokyo on a Japan Foundation Japanese Studies Research Fellowship.

REVIEWS AND ENDORSEMENTS

"Taking issue with common wisdom about the wall between Japan and the PRC in the era of ‘containment,’ Erik Esselstrom offers a rich set of case studies that bring to light the interaction between the two countries from the 1950s through the 1970s. His account of Japan’s awareness of Mao’s Great Cultural Revolution is of particular importance, as we learn of the diversity of responses in the media and among intellectuals and the public—for example, Esselstrom offers a fascinating window into the dreams and frustrations of Japanese office workers who found the Cultural Revolution an inspiring outlet for expressing discontent with their own restricted lives during the high-growth era of the 1960s."
—Andrew Gordon, Harvard University