EAA Articles Archive - Association for Asian Studies

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In Memoriam: Ezra F. Vogel (1930–2020)

by Glen S. Fukushima, Peter K. Frost

Those of us who are committed to studying East Asia lost an extraordinary scholar, teacher, and friend when the retired Harvard University Sociology Professor Ezra F. Vogel died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, this last December.

Feature Article

Debating the Allied Occupation of Japan (Part Two)

by Peter K. Frost

In the fall 2016 issue of Education About Asia, I outlined three policy decisions, which I consider a fascinating way to discuss the Allied Occupation of Japan (1945–1952). The three—the decision to keep the Shōwa Emperor (Hirohito) on the throne, punish selected individuals for war crimes, and create a new constitution that (in Article 9) seemed to outlaw war as an instrument of national policy—were all urged upon the Japanese by SCAP, a term for both the Supreme Commander of the Allied ...

Feature Article

Debating the Allied Occupation of Japan (Part One)

by Peter K. Frost

The Allied Occupation of Japan (1945–1952) was an extraordinary time in world history. Working through SCAP, a term that stands for both the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (General Douglas MacArthur until 1951) and the largely American bureaucracy, the United States and its allies insisted that Japan must enact major reforms before regaining independence. Conservative Japanese naturally resisted, but massive casualties, two atomic bombs, anger at the militarists, and fears that the Sov...

Book Review, Resources

North Korea Confidential: Private Markets, Fashion Trends, Prison Camps, Dissenters, and Defectors

by Peter K. Frost

by Daniel Tudor and James Pearson North Clarendon, VT: Tuttle Publishing, 2015 224 pages, ISBN: 978-0804844581, Hardcover Reviewed by Peter K. Frost As its title suggests, North Korea Confidential is written by two highly knowledgeable British journalists whose main aim is to counter the usual view that all North Koreans are either “brainwashed worshipers” of North Korea’s founding father, Kim Ilsung, or “helpless victims” of his grandson, Kim Jong-un, the third leader of t...

EAA Interview, Feature Article

A Diplomat in Asia: An Interview with Ambassador Nicholas Platt

by Peter K. Frost

Editor’s Note: In the interview that follows with EAA Associate Editor Peter K. Frost, Ambassador Platt provides “insider” glimpses of Mao Zedong; Richard Nixon; and insightful assessments of past, current, and future China-related topics. Peter: As you explain in your fascinating book, Mao Zedong’s 1972 decision to invite President Nixon to China was a turning point in US- China relations. Why did Chairman Mao do this? Ambassador Platt: Chairman Mao was worried about a possible mi...

Book Review Essay, Resources

Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy

by Peter K. Frost

Japan 1941 discusses why Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor even though many senior officials knew that their chances of winning the war were at best 50-50. While the author also discusses historical events such as Matthew C. Perry’s 1853 visit to Japan, the rationale behind Japan’s joining the Tripartite Pact with Italy and Germany in 1940, the personal experiences of “Soldier U,” and the popular reaction to the seemingly endless war with China that—depending on your poi...

Resources, Teaching Resources Essay

The Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Course Readers

by Peter K. Frost

The first four of fifteen scheduled readers published by Professor Laura Hein’s The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Course Readers project are certainly a technological triumph. Each online reader reprints Asia-Pacific Journal articles, endnotes, and suggestions for further readings. Links allow visitors to view individual articles; go directly to suggested further readings if these are online; and, in some cases, access relevant material in individual articles. The editor includes a number ...

Film Review Essay, Resources

ANPO: The Art X War: The Art of Resistance

by Peter K. Frost

DIRECTED BY LINDA HOAGLUND, PRODUCED BY NEW DAY FILMS, 2010 JAPANESE WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES, 89 MINUTES ANPO is an intriguing mix of anti-war paintings, documentary, feature film, anime (animation) clips, interviews with the artists in Japanese with English subtitles, and brief English language comments by author and CIA critic Tim Weiner. Although there are references to such things as Japanese atrocities in World War II and the terror felt by victims of American firebombing, most of the emph...

Feature Article

Will Japan Change?

by Peter K. Frost

Is Japan once again changing? Unlike 1868, when the newly empowered Meiji emperor moved to Tokyo to preside over a series of dramatic changes that became more generally known as the Meiji Restoration, or 1945, when the Allied Occupation allied with relatively progressive Japanese to create a new constitution and institute a set of major reforms, Japan has yet to see a truly dramatic leader or many public protests. Yet a less dramatic series of political, economic, and social developments, combin...

Feature Article

An Interview with Frank Upham

by Peter K. Frost

With Peter Frost In reaction to Japan’s militarist era, their American-influenced 1947 constitution stressed the limited role of the emperor, the separation of church and state, parliamentary democracy, individual rights, and the independence of the judiciary. Law was based on the so-called Six Codes (the 1947 constitution, the Civil Code, the Code of Civil Procedure, the Criminal Code, the Code of Criminal Procedure, and the Commercial Code). Criminal cases were handled in a European court...

Film Review Essay

Two Essays on Japan’s Peace Constitution: Japan’s Peace Constitution

by Peter K. Frost

John Junkerman wears his political heart on his sleeve. Opposed to any revision of Article 9 of Japan’s constitution, Junkerman has asked twelve distinguished commentators as well as some ordinary civilians from the United States, Japan, Korea, China, and the Arab world to discuss, while being videotaped, why they think the 1947 constitution of Japan should remain intact. To counter “realist” positions that rearmament is necessary, long-established scholars such as John Dower, Chalmers Joh...

Feature Article

Teaching Mr. Stimson

by Peter K. Frost

For some time now, I have taught a mixed lecture and discussion class on the atom bomb, primarily by using Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s February 1947 Harper’s Magazine article “The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb.” (note 1) As many EAA readers no doubt know, Secretary Stimson wrote this article in response to a request by Harvard University President James Conant, a distinguished scientist who had himself worked on the bomb and hence was worried about a number of Americans who critic...

The Japan Focus Web Site: A Commentary

by Peter K. Frost

The Japan Focus Web site is a collection of quite scholarly essays on largely current political and social questions. Selden and his fellow coordinators aim to make “the most innovative, creative and progressive voices in Japanese society” available to the general reader.1 The essays—145 in number when I last looked—can be indexed as a whole, but are also listed by categories such as “War and Terror,” “Japan and the World,” “People’s Movements” (including gender issues), an...

Film Review Essay, Resources

Four Personal Perspectives on the Film Documentary, Japanese Devils

by Barbara Markham, Janet Hoaglund, Linda Hoaglund, Peter K. Frost

Confessions of Imperial Army Soldiers From Japan’s War Against China DIRECTED BY MATSUI MINORU PRODUCED BY MATSUI MINORU AND OGURI KEN’ICHI VHS. 160 MINUTES (LONG VERSION) AND 58 MINUTES (SHORT VERSION) JAPANESE WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES Japanese Devils is an extraordinarily shocking and courageous film. It is difficult to imagine a more intimate, powerful, and persuasive indictment of Japanese atrocities in the long-ago war against China—or a more remarkable expression of public confe...

Book Review, Columns

Japan A Modern History

by Peter K. Frost

These are flush times for good Japan textbooks. In the Winter 2001 issue of Education About Asia (Volume 6 Number 3), I reviewed paperback editions of William G. Beasley’s The Japanese Experience (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1999) and Conrad Schirokauer, A Brief History of Japanese Civilization (Fort Worth, Harcourt, Brace College Publishers, 1993), and found both comprehensive and authoritative. Half-read on my desk lie two very promising works: Andrew Gordon, A Modern History o...

Columns, EAA Interview

James McClain, Author of Japan: A Modern History

by Peter K. Frost

As explained in the accompanying review (see page 62), James McClain’s Japan: A Modern History (New York: W.W. Norton, 2002) is a monumental new text that covers Japan from the 1600s to the present. To highlight some of the characteristics of the book, EAA Associate Editor Peter Frost asked Professor McClain the following questions:...

Book Review Essay, Columns

Censoring History: Citizenship and Memory in Japan, Germany, and the United States

by Peter K. Frost

Anyone who teaches Asian History and/or America’s relations with Asia should welcome this provocative if somewhat loosely organized set of essays. As the book’s subtitle suggests, eleven individuals from Australia, England, Japan, New Zealand and the United States have contributed ten essays detailing how three countries have debated the way young people should be taught about their past. While the book places six of the nine essays in a section called “Textbooks and Historical Memory” a...

Essay, Resources

Map of the Populations of Japan and the United States and Commentary

by Peter K. Frost

By Peter Frost When Japan is compared to the United States in maps and graphs of this sort, the differences are both profound and surprising. On the profound side, Japan, with a population approaching half that of the U.S., has a total land area about the size of California. Note further that roughly 80 percent of these small islands are too mountainous to be inhabitable. Also, periodic earthquakes, typhoons, and heavy snows (in the so-called “snow country” of northwest Honshu) batter ...

Book Review Essay, Resources

Comparing History: Beasley Versus Schirokauer

by Peter K. Frost

The Japanese Experience: A Short History of Japan BY WILLIAM G. BEASLEY BERKELEY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS, 1999 XVII + 299 PAGES ISBN 0-520-22560-0 PAPERBACK A Brief History of Japanese Civilization BY CONRAD SCHIROKAUER FORT WORTH, HARCOURT, BRACE COLLEGE PUBLISHERS, 1993 XI + 323 PAGES ISBN 0-15-500282-1 PAPERBACK ...

Essay, Resources

Comparing China to the United States

by Peter K. Frost

While this China-U.S. map and population chart is a perfect example of why one picture is worth a thousand words, we should all be aware of a few additional points that can perhaps best be made in prose. First of all, we have to recognize that the question of what constitutes “China” is hotly disputed. During the twentieth century—and most vividly since the Communist Party’s victory in 1949, the status of Taiwan and other offshore islands has been a major political issue between Comm...

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