SDHF Newsletter No.156 Book Review Middle KIngdom & Empire of Rising Sun

Middle Kingdom & Empire of the Rising Sun:
Sino-Japanese Relations, Past and Present
June Teufel Dreyer
Oxford University Press, 2016
(Reviewed by Aldric Hama)

January 21, 2017

A nuanced understanding of past Chinese and Japanese policy and Sino-Japanese relations helps explain the actions of these piv¬otal Asian nations. Dr. June Dreyer’s current book does not distill history down to a “good-guy, bad-guy” caricature, as done in so many contemporary textbooks, but clarifies the national inter¬ests that have so largely shaped East Asian history.
The early 20th century was punctuated by a brief period of mutual cooperation between Republican China and Imperial Japan, but the People’s Republic of China’s current assertive policy towards its neighbors should be viewed as a return to historical imperial thinking which saw China at the center of a universal order and barbarians pop¬ulating the periphery. That is something very different from the Maoist vision of spreading proletariat revolution.
By contrast, Ja¬pan’s recent foreign policy and actions represent less an aggressive return to historic national interests. than a collaboration with U.S. interests. Foreign policy specialists and others who wish to under¬stand the policies and actions of the world’s second largest (and nuclear-armed) economy, China, and those of the world’s third largest economy, Japan, will find Dr. Dreyer’s current discussion highly enlightening.
(This article was published in The Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, Vol.41, Number 4, Winter 2016)

Book Review: HTML:　 https://www.sdh-fact.com/review-article/895/
PDF: 　 https://www.sdh-fact.com/CL/hama-essay-JSPES.pdf

MOTEKI Hiromichi, Acting Chairman
for KASE Hideaki, Chairman
Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact