Japan S Quest For Autonomy

The Description for this book, Japan's Quest for Autonomy: National Security and Foreign Policy, 1930-1938, will be forthcoming.

A comprehensive and often controversial account of Japan's foreign and security policy before the Second World War based on War Crimes Trials materials, original Japanese sources, and detailed accounts by Japanese historians. Originally published in 1966. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Democracy in Post-War Japan assesses the development of democracy through the writings of the brilliant political thinker Maruyama Masao. The author explores the significance of Maruyama's notion of personal and social autonomy and its impact on the development of a distinctively Japanese democratic ideal. This book, based on contemporary documents and on interviews with Maruyama, is the only full-scale analysis of his work and thought to be published in English.

Japan's Private Spheres: Autonomy in Japanese History, 1600-1930 explores the genesis and historical development of autonomy and its evolving relationship with public authority in early modern and modern Japan.

This collection makes available key articles on the Japan-North American relationship from the Meiji era to the present. Volume one focuses on the necessity of Japanese modernization post-1868 and examines the build-up to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour. Volume two looks at the post-war period, in which US forces occupied Japan and were instrumental in its rebuilding as an economic superpower. In the years following this Japan and North America enjoyed a close yet occasionally fraught relationship, as competitors and allies. Volume two also examines the cultural ramifications of the influence of North America on Japan, and vice versa. Titles also available in this series include, Japan and South East Asia: International Relations (2001, 2 volumes, 295) and the forthcoming title Japanese Linguistics (2005, 3 volumes, c.425).

Great powers often initiate risky military and diplomatic inventions in far-off, peripheral regions that pose no direct threat to them, risking direct confrontation with rivals in strategically inconsequential places. Why do powerful countries behave in a way that leads to entrapment in prolonged, expensive, and self-defeating conflicts? Jeffrey W. Taliaferro suggests that such interventions are driven by the refusal of senior officials to accept losses in their state's relative power, international status, or prestige. Instead of cutting their losses, leaders often continue to invest blood and money in failed excursions into the periphery. Their policies may seem to be driven by rational concerns about power and security, but Taliaferro deems them to be at odds with the master explanation of political realism. Taliaferro constructs a "balance-of-risk" theory of foreign policy that draws on defensive realism (in international relations) and prospect theory (in psychology). He illustrates the power of this new theory in several case narratives: Germany's initiation and escalation of the 1905 and 1911 Moroccan crises, the United States' involvement in the Korean War in 1950-52, and Japan's entanglement in the second Sino-Japanese war in 1937-40 and its decisions for war with the U.S. in 1940-41.

Akira Iriye assesses Japan's international relations, from a Japanese perspective, in the century and a half since she ended her self-imposed isolation and resumed her place in the international community. The book is the author's own adaptation of two highly successful short studies, up to and after 1945, that he wrote for Japan. It ends with a consideration of Japan's international relations since the end of the Cold War, and her place in the world today. This is history written from within - and there could be no better interpreter of Japan to the West than this most distinguished of historians, who, himself Japanese, has long lived and taught in the United States.

About national and international power in the "modern" or Post Renaissance period. Explains how the various powers have risen and fallen over the 5 centuries since the formation of the "new monarchies" in W. Europe.