Japan and the Specter of Imperialism

"This study of the relation between the national and the modern in 'Ansei-treaty era Japan' is a bracing revision of late nineteenth-century intellectual history...This illuminating book not only criticizes the field but does something about it."

Journal of Japanese Studies

"Drawing heavily on analysis from post-colonial studies, Japan and the Specter of Imperialism gives a novel account of the relationship between Western imperialism and the spaces of Japanese national political cultures. The strength of this work lies in its analysis of the debates on what constituted a nation. These debates raged across a broad set of disciplines (literature, philosophy, social sciences, art, ethics), colonizing the imagination via the production of knowledge about history, peoples and places, whilst simultaneously contributing to the formation of an oppressive and territorially aggressive Japanese nation-state."

Journal of Asian Studies