The Sino Japanese War And Youth Literature

The Sino-Japanese War (1937 – 1945) was fought in the Asia-Pacific theatre between Imperial Japan and China, with the United States as the latter’s major military ally. An important line of investigation remains, questioning how the history of this war has been passed on to post-war generations’ consciousness, and how information sources, particularly those exposed to young people in their formative years, shape their knowledge and bias of the conflict as well as World War II more generally. This book is the first to focus on how the Sino-Japanese War has been represented in non-English and English sources for children and young adults. As a cross-cultural study and an interdisciplinary endeavour, it not only examines youth-orientated publications in China and the United States, but also draws upon popular culture, novelists’ memoirs, and family oral narratives to make comparisons between fiction and history, Chinese and American sources, and published materials and private memories of the war. Through quantitative narrative analysis, literary and visual analysis, and socio-political critique, it shows the dominant pattern of war stories, traces chronological changes over the seven decades from 1937 to 2007, and teases out the ways in which the history of the Sino-Japanese War has been constructed, censored, and utilized to serve shifting agendas. Providing a much needed examination of public memory, literary representation, and popular imagination of the Sino-Japanese War, this book will have huge interdisciplinary appeal, particularly for students and scholars of Asian history, literature, society and education.

The Sino-Japanese War (1937 – 1945) was fought in the Asia-Pacific theatre between Imperial Japan and China, with the United States as the latter’s major military ally. An important line of investigation remains, questioning how the history of this war has been passed on to post-war generations’ consciousness, and how information sources, particularly those exposed to young people in their formative years, shape their knowledge and bias of the conflict as well as World War II more generally. This book is the first to focus on how the Sino-Japanese War has been represented in non-English and English sources for children and young adults. As a cross-cultural study and an interdisciplinary endeavour, it not only examines youth-orientated publications in China and the United States, but also draws upon popular culture, novelists’ memoirs, and family oral narratives to make comparisons between fiction and history, Chinese and American sources, and published materials and private memories of the war. Through quantitative narrative analysis, literary and visual analysis, and socio-political critique, it shows the dominant pattern of war stories, traces chronological changes over the seven decades from 1937 to 2007, and teases out the ways in which the history of the Sino-Japanese War has been constructed, censored, and utilized to serve shifting agendas. Providing a much needed examination of public memory, literary representation, and popular imagination of the Sino-Japanese War, this book will have huge interdisciplinary appeal, particularly for students and scholars of Asian history, literature, society and education.

Introduces key terms, global concepts, debates, and histories for Children's Literature in an updated edition Over the past decade, there has been a proliferation of exciting new work across many areas of children’s literature and culture. Mapping this vibrant scholarship, the Second Edition of Keywords for Children’s Literature presents original essays on essential terms and concepts in the field. Covering ideas from “Aesthetics” to “Voice,” an impressive multidisciplinary cast of scholars explores and expands on the vocabulary central to the study of children’s literature. The second edition of this Keywords volume goes beyond disciplinary and national boundaries. Across fifty-nine print essays and nineteen online essays, it includes contributors from twelve countries and an international advisory board from over a dozen more. The fully revised and updated selection of critical writing—more than half of the essays are new to this edition—reflects an intentionally multinational perspective, taking into account non-English traditions and what childhood looks like in an age of globalization. All authors trace their keyword’s uses and meanings: from translation to poetry, taboo to diversity, and trauma to nostalgia, the book’s scope, clarity, and interdisciplinary play between concepts make this new edition of Keywords for Children’s Literature essential reading for scholars and students alike.

This is one of two volumes by the same editors that explore historical, philosophical, and cultural perspectives on literacy in China. This volume focuses on Chinese literacy, while the other volume is on English literacy. Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the country has witnessed a dramatic increase in its literacy rate, but not without challenges. The essays in this volume provide a comprehensive, cross-disciplinary look at changes in Chinese literacy education from ancient times to the modern day. Together, the essays address a wide array of topics, including early Chinese literacy development, children’s literature, foreign translated literature, and uses of information technology to teach Chinese. This authoritative text brings clarity and precision to the field and serves as a vital core resource for those who want to expand their understanding of Chinese literacy education. Its scope is unmatched even in academic literature in the Chinese language.

This project offers the first English-language general history of military operations during the Sino-Japanese war based on Japanese, Chinese, and Western sources.

In 1937, Japan blundered into a debilitating war with China, beginning with a minor incident near Peking (now Beijing) that quickly escalated. The Japanese won significant battles and captured the capital, Nanking, after a horrific massacre of its citizens. Chiang Kai-shek, China's acknowledged leader, would not surrender--each side believed it could win a war of attrition. The U.S. sided with China, primarily because of President Roosevelt's personal bias in their favor. Drawing on a wealth of sources including interviews with key players, from soldiers to diplomats, this history traces America's unexpected and unpopular involvement in an Asian conflict, and the growing recognition of Japan's threat to world peace and the inevitability of war.

This book examines the development of Chinese children’s literature from the late Qing to early Republican era. It highlights the transnational flows of knowledge, texts, and cultures during a time when children’s literature in China and the West was developing rapidly. Drawing from a rich archive of periodicals, novels, tracts, primers, and textbooks, the author analyzes how Chinese children’s literature published by Protestant missionaries and Chinese educators in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries presented varying notions of childhood. In this period of dramatic transition from the dynastic Qing empire to the new Republican China, young readers were offered different models of childhood, some of which challenged dominant Confucian ideas of what it meant to be a child. This volume sheds new light on a little-explored aspect of Chinese literary history. Through its contributions to the fields of children’s literature, book history, missionary history, and translation studies, it enhances our understanding of the negotiations between Chinese and Western cultures that shaped the publication and reception of Chinese texts for children.