Reviews for The New Asian Renaissance

The average rating for The New Asian Renaissance based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-03-15 00:00:00 Damon Anthony Written by academic scholars largely for that audience the prose was dry and in some cases the authors demonstrated their expertise by being overly focused on statistics rather than more general trends or concepts. In a few chapters the latter got so bogged down, IMHO, that I ended up skimming parts. There were also 3-4 chapters on topics which held little interest for me and/or on a topic that I had already read about somewhere else. So I did not read these at all. On a few occasions an author detailed some specifics about a Japanese leader or thinker or event(s) of some kind. Had there been more of these anecdotal moments in the book it probably would have been more interesting for me to read. I do not know enough about the topic in general to determine to what extent the book which was published in 1984 is dated. I did observe, however, that the chapter on the effects of colonialism on Korea did not refer to such current concerns as the Comfort Women or the territorial disputes that have taken place between the two countries in recent years. Despite these limitations there was still much useful information in this book. There was one very interesting chapter towards the end on 'the historiography' of colonialism in Japan. The author offered some modest critiques of what some of the other contributors had written. And another one at the end comparing Japanese to Western colonialism was noteworthy. I also learned some interesting things about the educational systems, police forces, and publishing policies established in Korea and Taiwan during the colonial period. The comparisons in various chapters between Japanese colonial practices in Taiwan vs Korea were new for me because I knew practically nothing about the colony in Taiwan. So was the somewhat more limited information on how the Japanese administered Micronesia and its nearby islands. I would recommend the book for those with some background in Japan's colonial history and interested in getting in-depth analyses of this issue. It is not one for a more general reader.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-02-21 00:00:00 Lori Ericsson This book is a superb work, surveying the creation and management of the Japanese colonial empire, as well as looking at its heritage and mode of existence vis-a-vis the older European empires. It is a quite masterful work, and within its broad range of topics and focuses, and the reader is bound to come across some which they find to be of utmost as well as little interest to them. However, the work done here is invaluable and this book a wonderful read.