Translating the Occupation

From 1931 to 1945, as Japanese imperialism spread throughout China, three distinct regions experienced life under occupation: Manchukuo, East China, and North China. Yet despite the enduring importance of the occupation to world history and historical memory in East Asia, Translating the Occupation is the first English-language volume to make available key sources from this period to both scholars and students. Contributors have translated texts from Chinese, Japanese, and Korean on a wide range of subjects. Each is accompanied by a short essay to contextualize the translation and explain its significance. This volume offers a practical, accessible sourcebook from which to challenge standard narratives. The texts have been selected to deepen our understanding of the myriad tensions, transformations, and continuities in Chinese wartime society. Translating the Occupation reasserts the centrality of the occupation to twentieth-century Chinese history, opening the door further to much-needed analysis.

Jonathan Henshaw is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica. He is now authoring a biography of Kiang Kang-hu. Craig A. Smith is a lecturer at the University of Melbourne. His articles have appeared in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Twentieth-Century China, and Modern Asian Studies. He is currently working on a book about twentieth-century China-centred regionalism. Norman Smith is a professor of history at the University of Guelph. He is the author of Resisting Manchukuo: Chinese Women Writers and Japanese Occupation and Intoxicating Manchuria: Alcohol, Opium, and Culture in China’s Northeast.

Contributors: Xue Bingjie, Timothy Cheek, Timothy Cronin, Annika A. Culver, Son Yoo Di, Matthew Galway, Timothy Iles, Lee Jonghyun, Naoko Kato, Jennifer Junwa Lau, David Luesink, Brian G. Martin, Janice Matsumura, Ota Norio, Xie Miya Qiong, Christopher Rea, Morgan Rocks, Hua Rui, Bill Sewell, Ronald Suleski, Torsten Weber, Guo Weiting, Yun Xia, Wang Yu, Zhang Yuanfang.