One of the finest soldiers and most courageous leaders I have ever known. – Lt Doug McClean, D Coy, 39th Battalion

This book explores the trial of over 600 students arrested at the University of Tokyo in 1969 after thousands of riot police had flooded the campus to end the students’ year-long occupation of the university. The trial, which was the largest in Japanese legal history and was remarkable for being the first to hear cases in the absence of defendants and their lawyers, quickly turned into a divisive struggle over legal process that spilled out of the courts into the media, and in so doing raised troubling questions about the legitimacy of the courts themselves. In making the case for the significance of this trial, this book places it within the context of the Japanese state’s attempts to manage social order, arguing that the Tokyo University trial was a moment in which a range of postwar themes – legal process and rights, courtroom order and authority, the proper role of lawyers, the social position of students, and the legitimacy of forms of policing – crystalized in a courtroom battle that pushed at the limits of Japan’s postwar sociologic order. The book also sheds new light on the students' experiences of the trial, exploring their time spent in detention and demonstrating how tensions internal to the student movement manifested during the trial process.

Japanese troops seized and brutally occupied New Guinea's capital, Lae, for 18 months – until 16 September 1943. That day Australian soldiers retook the town against fierce resistance. Defeated, and after suffering huge losses, 8000 Japanese soldiers fled across the formidable 4000-metre mountains behind the town ; 2000 died on the nightmare trek.

‘A work of singular importance . . . balanced, original, human, accessible, and riveting’ – Philippe Sands, author of East-West Street.

"A sharp-tongued spokesman for Japan's environment and traditions" —The New York Times

This book includes forty-one chapters about foreign observers’ discourses on Japan. These include a wide range of perspectives from the travelogues of curious visitors to academic theses by scholars, which offer us a broad spectrum of contents, reflecting a variety of attitudes toward Japan. The works were written during the period from the 1850s to the 1980s, a timespan during which Japan became, in stages, more open to the outside world after a long isolation under the Tokugawa shogunate. From the perspective of “Japanology,” one can discern three distinct periods of rising interest in the country from abroad. The first tide of such interest came shortly after the opening of Japan, when various foreign travelers, including those who could not be included in this book, came over and wrote down their impressions of the country—which was, for them, a land of mystery and mystique, which had just opened its doors to them.

This book includes chapters on the key turning points in modern Japanese history from the Meiji Restoration to Japan-China diplomatic normalization in the 1970s and beyond. The topics covered include the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War, the First and Second World Wars, the Manchurian Crisis, the US Occupation, postwar Japan-China relations, and postwar decolonization. Readers will learn how new research by Japanese historians has led to the revision of conventional views on the turbulent history of Japan, once the enemy of the United States in the war in the Asia-Pacific and now the US’s closest ally in the region.

Japanese Major General Horii Tomitarô, commanding the South Seas Force, had the Australians on the back foot. Australia was holding the last defendable ridge in the Owen Stanley ranges, Imita Ridge. Horii to his distress was then given orders from Imperial Headquarters in Tokyo that he was to fall back across the mountains to the Japanese beachheads at Gona, Sanananda, and Buna, leaving a force between Templeton's Crossing and Eora Creek to stop any Australian advance through the mountains. The Japanese, unknown to the Australians evacuated Ioribaiwa Ridge just before they launched their attacks and to their amazement on storming the heights, the Australians encountered no resistance – the Japanese had gone.

In a rare combination of comprehensive coverage and sustained critical focus, this book examines Japanese history in its entirety to identify the factors underlying the nation's progression to superpower status. Japan's achievement is explained not merely in economic terms, but at a more fundamental level, as a product of historical patterns of response to circumstance. Japan is shown to be a nation historically impelled by a pragmatic determination to succeed. The book also highlights unresolved questions and little-known facts.

This book looks at the case study of Hachioji as a major transit hub with a world-class public transportation system in Japan. It tracks how Tokyo slowly expands into its suburban, rural or sub-rural districts. It also wants to profile the multiple identities of a city that is simultaneously an ecological asset, a heritage locale in addition to a logistics hub. The volume is probably the first of its kind to analyze the western sector of the largest city in the world.

This book looks at the case study of Hachioji as a major transit hub with a world-class public transportation system in Japan. It tracks how Tokyo slowly expands into its suburban, rural or sub-rural districts. It also wants to profile the multiple identities of a city that is simultaneously an ecological asset, a heritage locale in addition to a logistics hub. The volume is probably the first of its kind to analyze the western sector of the largest city in the world.

Well-grounded on abundant Japanese language sources which have been underused, this book uncovers the League of Nations’ works in East Asia in the inter-war period. By researching the field of social and other technical issues, namely, the trade in narcotics, the trafficking of women and the work in terms of improving health provision and providing economic advice to Nationalist China, it not only examines their long-term impacts on the international relations in the region but also argues that the League’s works challenged the existing imperial order of East and Southeast Asia. The book offers a key read for academics and students of international history and international relations, and others studying Japan or East Asia in the twentieth century.

Well-grounded on abundant Japanese language sources which have been underused, this book uncovers the League of Nations’ works in East Asia in the inter-war period. By researching the field of social and other technical issues, namely, the trade in narcotics, the trafficking of women and the work in terms of improving health provision and providing economic advice to Nationalist China, it not only examines their long-term impacts on the international relations in the region but also argues that the League’s works challenged the existing imperial order of East and Southeast Asia. The book offers a key read for academics and students of international history and international relations, and others studying Japan or East Asia in the twentieth century.