Japan's Occupation of Java in the Second World War: A Transnational History

by Ethan Mark, Christopher Gerteis (Editor)

Overview

Japan's Occupation of Java in the Second World War draws upon written and oral Japanese, Indonesian, Dutch and English-language sources to narrate the Japanese occupation of Java as a transnational intersection between two complex Asian societies, placing this narrative in a larger wartime context of domestic, regional, and global crisis.

Japan's occupation of Java is here revealed in a radically new and nuanced light, as an ambiguous encounter revolutionary in the degree of mutual interests that drew the two sides together, fascinating and tragic in its evolution, and profound in the legacies left behind. Mark structures his study around a diverse group of Japanese and Indonesians captivated by the wartime vision of a 'Greater Asia.' The book is not only the first transnational study of Japan's wartime occupation of Java, but the first to focus on the Second World War experience in transnational terms 'on the ground' anywhere in Asia.

Breaking new ground interpretatively, thematically and narratively, Mark's monumental study is of vital significance for students and scholars of modern Asian and global history.

This book is published in partnership with Columbia University's Weatherhead East Asian Institute (http://weai.columbia.edu/japans-occupation-of-java/).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350144064
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	07/11/2019
Series:	SOAS Studies in Modern and Contemporary Japan
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.82(d)

About the Author

Ethan Mark is Associate Professor of Modern Japanese and Asian History in the Japanese and Asian Studies programs at Leiden University, The Netherlands.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Out of China
2. Crisis, Japan, and “Asia” in the Prewar Netherlands Indies
3. Venturing South
4. First Encounters
5. Restoring Orders
6. Greater Asia and Indonesia
7. Sukarno's Turn
8. Father Figures
9. Normalization
10. Reckonings
Conclusion: Occupied Indonesia in 20th-century History
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

[A] rich and illuminating narrative of Japan's occupation of Java, highlighting a range of cultural and military figures to explore the perspectives of both Japanese and Indonesian communities. Based on over two decades of research, this immensely detailed and comparative work helpfully clarifies Japan's concept of a Greater Asianism in the context of vanishing Dutch authority and emerging nationalism.” – Michigan War Studies Review

“Ethan Mark’s Japan’s Occupation is a tour de force that grasps wartime Java as the locus of an intense contestation between civilian and military actors engaged in Japan’s southward imperial expansion, the polemics of Orientalism, anti-Western liberation, and Indonesian unification. It deftly maps the colonial structure of rule alongside Japanese-Indonesian cooperation and interaction that aspired to see Java integrated into Japan’s Great Asia, while also considering the cultural and political dynamics that shaped Java’s place prior to Japanese occupation and post-war realities that placed the newly independent nation of Indonesia in Sukarno’s hands.” – International Convention of Asia Scholars, Shortlisted for the 2019 ICAS Book Prize in Humanities

“Well organised and draws upon an impressive number of Japanese, Dutch, Indonesian and English language sources to produce many interesting and original insights. It will appeal to students of the theory and practice of Japanese imperialism and of Indonesia's journey towards eventual independence.” —Asian Affairs

“Brilliantly researched and compellingly argued, this remarkable book on the Japanese occupation of the Netherlands East Indies should be required reading for anyone who wishes to understand both the appeal and the contradictions of the Japanese empire for occupiers and occupied alike as they strove to create a postcolonial and post-Western vision of a Greater Asia.” —Takashi Fujitani, Dr. David Chu Chair in Asia Pacific Studies and Professor of History, University of Toronto, Canada

“With clear-eyed recognition of the hypocrisy of Japan's project to “liberate” Indonesia, Mark brilliantly explores the profound ironies of the Japanese wartime occupation. He identifies the grounds on which Japanese rulers and their local partners forged an ultimately doomed alliance: common enemies and a seductive shared rhetoric of promoting “Asian” culture. He takes seriously the efforts of a wide array of Indonesians to turn wartime crisis into opportunity for their nation and themselves. A pioneering work in the transnational history of World War II in Asia.” —Andrew Gordon, Professor of Japanese History, Harvard University, USA

“Ethan Mark's deeply researched study on Japan's occupation of Java gives us an illuminating history of Asianism as lived and breathed. Through its focus on a wide-ranging cast of Japanese and Indonesian characters, the book reveals the tangle of competing nationalist agendas that inspired and informed agents of “greater Asia”: anti-colonial nationalisms, self-determining ethno-nationalisms, imperialist ultra-nationalisms, Occidentalisms, self-Orientalisms, jingoisms, and xenophobias. A major contribution to the literature on wartime Asia.” —Louise Young, Professor of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

“A powerful new contribution to the field, significantly different from anything else available in print. Unlike most of the literature on the subject in English, it highlights information and opinions from primary sources in the languages of all three principal nations involved: Japan, Indonesia, and the Netherlands. It observes events and, particularly, ideas from perspectives ranging from the local to the international, often pointing out important comparisons; and it demonstrates convincingly the complexity of realities beyond long-familiar military and political narratives. Most importantly, however, Mark's emphasis on the paradoxes, contradictions, and shifting nuances behind virtually every aspect of the occupation's history should rescue it once and for all from simplistic or one-sided interpretation.” —William H. Frederick, Emeritus Professor of History, Ohio University, USA

“This is a revolutionary piece of writing. Using Japanese, Indonesian and Dutch sources, Ethan Mark succeeds in doing what nobody did before: explaining the enchantment and disenchantment between Japanese imperialists and Indonesian anticolonialists during the Japanese occupation of Indonesia. He succeeds in analysing the intellectual entanglements of the intellectuals of both nations in a compassionate and at the same time carefully balanced and even-handed treatment. The book makes clear why, for a considerable time during the Pacific War, Indonesians and Japanese could believe to have a common agenda. By doing so, Mark's investigations explain to us the fascinating ambiguities of Japanese imperialism – both liberating and exploitative – and Indonesian nationalism – on which the Japanese charm has exerted such crucial influence. Incisively argued, meticulously documented and beautifully written, this is a masterpiece of transnational intellectual history.” —Remco Raben, Associate Professor of History, Utrecht University and University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

From the Publisher