This course focuses on the changes brought by the imperialist expansion on the political, cultural, and economic fabric of Japanese society. With its successes in the Sino-Japanese War in 1895 and the Russo-Japanese War in 1904-05 Japan emerged as a great power in world history. Japan challenged the colonial interests of the Western powers in Asian continent and developed its expansionist ambitions. Starting from colonial bases in Taiwan and Korea, Japan launched a program of military, economic and cultural expansion, first on the Asian mainland, and then in the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Although this program of expansion ended more than 50 years ago, Japan's activities in Asia in the first half of this century remain unfinished business in a political sense. Even beyond the boundaries of the Japanese empire, the rest of Asia was affected in one or the other way by the Japanese military interlude, and those territories occupied by Japan experienced fundamental transformations. The issue of collaboration and the questions of reparations and of textbook history remain profoundly sensitive across the Asian continent. Through lectures, discussions and films, students will gain a better understanding of these historic changes and Japan's political and economic relations with its Asian neighbours today.

Beasley, W.G., The Rise of Modern Japan, London, 1990
Hane, Mikiso, Modern Japan: A Historical Survey, Oxford: Westview Press, 1992
Livingston, J., Moore, J. and Oldfather, F., The Japan Reader: Imperial Japan: 1800-1945, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976, 105-494