Table of Contents

Introduction

1 City Planning

2 Imperialist and Imperial Façades

3 Economic Development

4 Colonial Society

Conclusion

Notes; Bibliography; Index

Promotional Information

While other studies focus on the role of diplomats and the military, Constructing Empire demonstrates that building the Japanese empire also required civilian participation.

About the Author

Bill Sewell is an associate professor of history at Saint Mary's University. He has contributed to Harbin to Hanoi: Colonial Built Environment in Asia, 1840 to 1940, edited by Laura Victoir and Victor Zatsepine; Japan Review; and Japan at the Millennium: Joining Past and Future, edited by David W. Edgington. He is also the editor of Resilient Japan: Papers Presented at the 24th Annual Conference of the Japan Studies Association of Canada and Seven Crucial Centuries: Changes in Premodern Chinese Society and Economy, 499 BCE–1800 CE by John Lee.

Reviews

The narrative in these chapters is grounded in vibrant historic detail, which results in a readable, empirically rich account. - Sherzod Muminov (Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review) "The quality and the amount of research [Bill Sewell] has done is very impressive, and the book is sophisticated and informative." - Yuxin Ma (American Review of China Studies)  [Sewell] succeeds in demonstrating the complexity of Japanese society in Changchun/Xinjing. Constructing Empire's detailed chapters will be indispensable to graduate students and faculty researching or teaching the Japanese Empire and Japanese urban history. - Alan Thornton (Journal of Asian Studies) Constructing Empire will surely continue to be the essential guide which future authors will use in order to understand the original intentions of those who set about to create "the paradise of the East" in Manchukuo. - Peter Cunich, University of Hong Kong (ABE Journal) This book serves as a study of an important dimension of Japanese imperialism and, at the same time, an exploration of an audacious undertaking in twentieth-century urban high modernism... [Sewell] offers an unexpected finding in the degree of continuity in the life of Japanese Changchun that might encourage us to reconsider, at the "street level", the sharpness of the great divide of imperial history conveniently marked by the Japanese conquest of 1931. - Yoshihisa Tak Matsusaka, Wellesley College (American Historical Review)