Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture, and Community in Interwar Japan Book

The prose can be tough going, which reveals what a lazy reader I am, but the politics are golden. To point out that fascism is "a kind of inner lining of modernism" and cut from the same cloth as liberalism is a daring argument. The interwar in Japan is undergoing a kind of revival as more and more authors try to examine the many facets of the processes - cultural and social as well as political - that are often dismissed as unidirectional and leading Japan into a 'mistaken modernity' and total war. Harootunian offers the many voices of this period: be prepared to reread sentences and think hard about arguments. You get out what you put in.