Japan's Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism

In this first social and cultural history of Japan's construction of Manchuria, Louise Young offers an incisive examination of the nature of Japanese imperialism. Focusing on the domestic impact of Japan's activities in Northeast China between 1931 and 1945, Young considers "metropolitan effects" of empire building: how people at home imagined and experienced the empire they called Manchukuo.

Contrary to the conventional assumption that a few army officers and bureaucrats were responsible fo...