Democracy In Postwar Japan Book

This is a very interesting book, especially the introduction of the idea of peripheral colonization, which is a useful tool to explain the world colonial approaches in general and Japanese endeavors in Korean peninsular in particular.

The main shortcoming of this book is that it argues that 'the first major flaw was Japan's misperceptions of the European examples and their implications for Korean assimilation' (p.202), but it does not even mention the French association approach, which seems more widely adopted by colonizers around the world. This approach seems to align more with the arguments the author proposed. It would be prefect if the book discuss a little bit more on why Japanese empire did not take the association approach, rather insisting on a complete assimilation of Korean peninsular.