Nation-Empire

By the end of World War II, hundreds of thousands of young men in the Japanese colonies, in particular Taiwan and Korea, had expressed their loyalty to the empire by volunteering to join the army. Why and how did so many colonial youth become passionate supporters of Japanese imperial nationalism? And what happened to these youth after the war? Nation-Empire investigates these questions by examining the long-term mobilization of youth in the rural peripheries of Japan, Taiwan, and Korea. Personal stories and village histories vividly show youth's ambitions, emotions, and identities generated in the shifting conditions in each locality. At the same time, Sayaka Chatani unveils an intense ideological mobilization built from diverse contexts—the global rise of youth and agrarian ideals, Japan's strong drive for assimilation and nationalization, and the complex emotions of younger generations in various remote villages.

Nation-Empire engages with multiple historical debates. Chatani considers metropole-colony linkages, revealing the core characteristics of the Japanese Empire; discusses youth mobilization, analyzing the Japanese seinendan (village youth associations) as equivalent to the Boy Scouts or the Hitler Youth; and examines society and individual subjectivities under totalitarian rule. Her book highlights the shifting state-society transactions of the twentieth-century world through the lens of the Japanese Empire, inviting readers to contend with a new approach to, and a bold vision of, empire study.

Sayaka Chatani is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the National University of Singapore.

Chatani's study impresses greatly in its in-depth investigation of three locations across the empire, making excellent use of primary sources and secondary scholarship in four languages. This range is what enables her penetrating analytical comparisons of regional and local variations.

Nation-Empire will already be of tremendous value to any scholar seeking to undertake comparative research on empires and global youth culture, and we can expect that this book will remain the definitive work on youth in the Japanese Empire for a great many years to come.

Nation-Empire contributes to a number of fields and should be widely read outside of East Asian history... while there are other works that address the local-global dynamic as it applies to colonialism in East Asia and elsewhere, Chatani raises the bar by adding several layers to both the local and "global" without slighting one over the other.

Chatani (history, National Univ. of Singapore) has written a groundbreaking study of how and why young men in rural areas of Japan and its then-colonies, Taiwan and Korea, became emotionally invested in the project of Japanese nationalism and militarism. Providing a new perspective on the emotional attraction of the Japanese Empire and the opportunities it provided to the youth in the colonies, this superb study will be required reading for those interested in modern Japanese history, Japanese empire-building, and imperialism and colonialism.

Lori Watt, Associate Professor of History, Washington University in St. Louis, and author of When Empire Comes Home:

Chatani answer a vexing question of colonialism: why rural youth in Japan, Taiwan, and Korea actively engaged in colonial and wartime initiatives, including military service. This history transforms our understanding of Japan as a "nation-empire" and makes a valuable contribution to the world history of youth.

David Ambaras, Associate Professor of History, North Carolina State University, and author of Bad Youth: Juvenile Delinquency and the Politics of Everyday Life in Modern Japan:

Nation-Empire redirects the scholarly focus from urban toward rural society and offers a persuasive analysis of sociopolitical change and subjectivity formation across the Japanese empire. Rigorous in its framing and effective in its comparisons, this book is a substantial contribution and reminder that modernity was not simply an urban affair.