HISTORY 1625 JAPAN AND WORLD WAR II IN ASIA Spring 2013 Tuesday and Thursday: 10-11AM Room: CGIS North (Knafel Bldg.), Room K354 Lecturer: Jeremy A. Yellen Office: CGIS South Room S152 Office Hours: Tuesday, 11 1 Email: jyellen@fas.harvard.edu Teaching Fellow: TBD Office: Office Hours: Email: COURSE DESCRIPTION World War II remains the most total and bloodiest conflict in world history. Fought on multiple fronts on three continents, the war witnessed a complex mesh of ideologies and war aims. It wrought unparalleled destruction and targeted civilians to an unprecedented degree. It has been the only war to date in which atomic weapons were used. The war pit empires against each other, and led to the fall of many of those global empires. This course will focus on World War II in the Asia-Pacific. It explores the war from the vantage point of Japanese history, but also tries to put the war in its proper regional context. Beginning with the aftermath of World War I, this course journeys through the crisis of East Asian international relations in 1920s and 1930s to the outbreak of a multi-front war in East and Southeast Asia. It considers the war s impact on empires and nations, soldiers and victims, and peoples throughout the region. And it explores the legacies that remain visible across the region today. ASSESSMENT The course grade will be based on the following: Mid-term (hour) exam: 10% Response Papers (4): 20% Final Paper: 25% Final Exam: 20% Section Participation: 25% Written Assignments: Response Papers: Response papers will be assigned in sections. They should be no more than two pages long, and should show thoughtful and active engagement with the readings. Term Paper: This paper addresses a topic of your own choosing, in consultation with the section leader. The paper should draw on relevant secondary works and consult primary documents, most likely in English (whether translated or originally in English). The paper should be roughly 4000 to 6000 words, excluding bibliography.
Term paper due date: Thursday, May 9, 5PM. They must be uploaded to the course website. No late papers or extensions. REQUIRED READING (AVAILABLE AT HARVARD COOP FOR PURCHASE) Bayly, Christopher and Tim Harper Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia, 1941-1945. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004. Dower, John W. War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986. Haruko Taya and Theodore F. Cook, Japan at War: An Oral History. The New Press, 1992. Iriye, Akira. Pearl Harbor and the Coming of the Pacific War: A Brief History with Documents and Essays. Bedford, 1999. SOURCEBOOK (AVAILABLE AT GNOMON COPY FOR PURCHASE) Sourcebook: History 1625 Japan and World War II in Asia SYLLABUS WEEK 1: INTRODUCTION Jan. 29: Introduction: The Many Faces and Names of World War II Jan. 31: High Imperialism in Asia WEEK 2: Bayly, Christopher and Tim Harper, Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia, 1941-1945 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), 1-69. Hata Ikuhiko, Continental Expansion, 1905-1941, The Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 6: The Twentieth Century, Chapter 6, 271-314. [C/W] Optional Outside Reading Tarling, Nicholas, The Establishment of the Colonial Regimes, The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia: Volume 2, 1-72. [C/W] WORLD WAR I AND NEW VISIONS FOR WORLD ORDER Feb. 5: World War I and Aftermath Feb. 7: Cooperative Diplomacy Amidst Growing Tension Iriye, Akira. The Failure of Economic Expansion: 1918-1931, in Silberman and Harootunian, ed., Japan in Crisis: Essays on Taishô Democracy, 237-269. [C/W] Pyle, Kenneth B. The Challenge of International Liberalism in Japan Rising (New York: PublicAffairs, 2007), 137-169. [C/W]
Sadao Asada, Between the Old Diplomacy and the New, 1918-1922: The Washington System and the Origins of Japanese-American Rapprochement. Diplomatic History, Vol. 30, Issue 2 (Apr. 2006), 211-230. [C/W] Sourcebook, pp. 1-25. [Includes: (1) Sadao Asada, From Washington to London: The Imperial Japanese Navy and the Politics of Naval Limitation, 1921-1930, The Washington Conference, 1921-22, Naval Rivalry, East Asian Stability, and the Road to Pearl Harbor (Cass, 1994), 147-184; (2) Peaceful Cooperation Abroad, Sources of Japanese Tradition, 2nd ed., Vol. 2 (Columbia University Press, 2005), 886-889. Henceforth this will be listed as SJT, 2; and (3) Konoe Fumimaro, Against a Pacifism Centered on England and America. ] WEEK 3: THE GLOBAL DEPRESSION AND THE MANCHURIAN CRISIS Feb. 12: Economic Crisis and the Manchurian Incident Feb. 14: War Fever! The Rise of the Right Iriye, Akira, The Origins of the Second World War in Asia and the Pacific, pp. 1-39. [C/W] Sourcebook, pp. 27-57, pp. 67-77. [Includes: (1) A Plan to Occupy Manchuria SJT, 2: 986-989, 992-995. Louise Young, Japan s Total Empire, 55-78, 88-114; and (2) Matsuoka Yōsuke s Addresses at the League of Nations. ] WEEK 4: WEEK 5: A NEW ORDER IN EAST ASIA Feb. 19: The China Incident and Total War in China Feb. 21: Japan Looks South Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (Penguin Press, 1998), 3-16, 215-225. [C/W] Ferguson, Niall. The Gates of Hell, in The War of the World (New York: Penguin Press, 2006) 466-502. [C/W] Lary, Diana. Drowned Earth: The Strategic Breaching of the Yellow River Dyke, 1938, War in History Vol. 8, No. 2 (April 2001), 191-207. [C/W] Sourcebook, pp. 58-65. [Includes: Konoe Fumimaro, The Imperial Rule Assistance Associetion, Spiritual Mobilizaiton, Economic Mobilization, in SJT, 2: 991-992, 995-1005.] Yang, Daqing. The Challenges of the Nanjing Massacre: Reflections on Historical Inquiry, The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography (2001), 133-172. [C/W] PEARL HARBOR COMETH! Feb. 26: Binding Fascisms Germany, Italy, Japan Feb. 28: The Road to Pearl Harbor Ike, Nobutaka, Japan s Decision for War, 3-13, 103-107, 133-163. [C/W] Iriye, Akira (ed). Pearl Harbor and the Coming of the Pacific War: A Brief History with Documents and Essays (Bedford, 1999), 14-108, 125-146. WEEK 6: ASIA AT WAR Mar. 5: The Greater East Asia War Mar. 7: Contested War Aims, Contested Images
Atlantic Charter. [C/W] Cook, Japan at War, 47-55, 71-95. Dower, John W. War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, 3-14, 77-117, 203-290. Okawa, The Spiritual Basis of Asian Revolution and Unity, 36-40. [C/W] Sourcebook, pp. 78-82. [Includes: The Greater East Asia War, SJT, 2: 1010-1013.] WEEK 7: OCCUPIED ASIA I Mar. 12: MIDTERM EXAMINATION Mar. 14: Collaborators, Resistors, and Forgotten Armies Bayly, Christopher and Tim Harper Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia, 1941-1945 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 71-268. (Skim as necessary). Cook, Japan at War, Keeping Order in the Indies, 105-113. Parker, The Second World War: A Short History (Oxford, 1989), 86-94. [C/W] Optional Outside Reading See debate between John Whittier Treat and Timothy Brook in the Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 71, No. 1 (February 2012), 81-114. [Available through Hollis] WEEK 8: SPRING BREAK!!!!!! WEEK 9: OCCUPIED ASIA II Mar. 26: Redefined War Aims: Order and Independence in Asia Mar. 28: Atrocity in War Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, 307-359, 393-422. Cook, Japan at War, 99-105. Dower, War Without Mercy, 33-73. Proceedings of the Assembly of Greater East Asiatic Nations Held on November 5 and 6, 1943, at the Diet Building, Tokyo, Contemporary Japan (November 1943), 1339-1386. [C/W] WEEK 10: THE HOME FRONTS Apr. 2: The Internment of Japanese-Americans Apr. 4: Cultures of Sacrifice Cook, Japan at War, 121-127, 177-220. Cook, Haruko Taya. Women s Deaths as Weapons of War in Japan s Final Battle, in Barbara Molony and Kathleen Uno, eds. Gendering Modern Japanese History (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2008), 326-356. [C/W]
Sourcebook, pp. 83-126. [Includes: (1) Alice Yang Murray, ed., What Did the Internment of Japanese Americans Mean? (Bedford/St. Martin s Press, 2000), 1-26; (2) Ivan Morris, The Kamikaze Fighters, in The Nobility of Failure (New York, 1975), 276-334.] WEEK 11: THE END IS NIGH Apr. 9: The Emperor and the Allied Advance Apr. 11: Incinerating Cities and the Politics of Surrender Asada, Sadao. The Shock of the Atomic Bomb and Japan s Decision to Surrender, Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 67, No. 4 (Nov. 1998), 477-512. [Available on JSTOR] Bundy, McGeorge. Danger and Survival (Random House, 1988), 54-97. [C/W] Cook, Japan at War, 343-353, 382-399. Sourcebook, pp. 127-180. [Includes: (1) Edward J. Drea, Chasing a Decisive Victory: Emperor Hirohito and Japan s War with the West (1941-1945), in Edward J. Drea, In the Service of the Emperor: Essays on the Imperial Japanese Army (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 169-215. (2) Henry L. Stimson, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb. Harper s Magazine (Feb. 1947). (3) Hasegawa Tsuyoshi, The Atomic Bombs and the Soviet Invasion: Which Was More Important in Japan s Decision to Surrender, in Hasegawa, ed., The End of the Pacific War: Reappraisals (Stanford, 2007), 113-144.] Yellen, Jeremy A. The Specter of Revolution: Reconsidering Japan s Decision to Surrender. The International History Review (2012), 1-22. Available free online at the following website: http://www.tandfonline.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/loi/rinh20 WEEK 12: JAPAN S DEFEAT BUT WHOSE VICTORY? Apr. 16: Fading Empire in Asia Apr. 18: From Hot to Cold War Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, 423-464. Roy, Denny. The Pacific War and its Political Legacies (Praeger, 2009), 107-124. [C/W] Stockwell, A.J. Southeast Asia in War and Peace: The End of the Colonial Empires, Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, Vol. 2: 329-386. [C/W] WEEK 13: FROM WAR TO PEACE Apr. 23: The Tokyo Trials, War Crimes, and War Responsibility Apr. 25: Memory and Nationalism Dower, War without Mercy, 293-317. Ienaga Saburo, The Glorification of War in Japanese Education, in International Security Vol. 18, No. 3 (1993-1994), 113-133. [Available on JSTOR] Sourcebook, pp. 181-250. [Includes: (1) John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, 443-521; (2) Thank God for the Atomic Bomb, The Battle of the Enola Gay, Unconditional Surrender at the Smithsonian, and Memory, Myth, and History, Hiroshima s Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy (Pamphleteers, 1998), 211-222, 317-354; (3) Kobayashi Yoshinori, SJT, 2: 1290-1293.]
WEEK 14: LEGACIES OF WAR Apr. 30: World War II in Retrospect Dower, John W. The Useful War, Daedalus, Vol. 119, No. 3 (Summer 1990), 49-70. [Available on JSTOR] Igarashi, Yoshikuni. The Bomb, Hirohito, and History: The Foundational Narrative of Postwar Relations between Japan and the United States. Bodies of Memory: Narratives of War in Postwar Japanese Culture (Princeton, 2000), pp. 19-46. [C/W] Seraphim, Franziska. Relocating War Memory at Century s End: Japan s Postwar Responsibility and Global Public Culture, in Sheila Miyoshi Jager and Rana Mitter, eds. Ruptured Histories: War and Memory in Post-Cold War Asia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), 15-46. [C/W]