Between Japans victory over China in the first Sino-Japanese war and its victory over Russia ten years later fundamental changes took place in the East Asian realm—changes in the Japanese publics image of itself and its position in the world and in its stance toward a weakened and increasingly marginalized China, changes in how the Western powers viewed China and Japan and how China and Japan in turn viewed the West. Building his narrative around key events from the troubled interwar decade, Matthias Zachmann presents a revealing picture of how these changes evolved, the inner tension among Japanese motives at different junctures, and such inherently slippery notions as pan-Asianism, what it meant to be civilized, to engage in war, or for a stronger country to adopt a stance of friendship toward a weaker one. The perspectives developed in this book, often psychologically informed, deepen our understanding of Sino-Japanese relations leading up to the Pacific War; they also shed light on the far less unequal relationship that has emerged between China and Japan in more recent years. Paul A. Cohen Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies Harvard University

A hundred years ago, Japan emerged as a major power. Today China is fast asserting its influence in the world arena. How a non-Western nation defines its identity and destiny is a question that has serious implications for the West as well as for other countries. The ways in which Japan’s political and intellectual elites argued about the nature and direction of national policy at the turn of the twentieth century and the choices they made, as Matthias Zachmann skillfully traces them, were to have fateful consequences for East Asia and the wider world. The book will not only serve as an excellent introduction to that story but also offer clues to understanding contemporary Chinese domestic and foreign affairs. Akira Iriye, Harvard University