Recommended reading

The best introductions to this subject are Akira Iriye, The Origins of the Second World War in Asia and the Pacific (London, 1987) and Peter Calvocoressi, Guy Wint and John Pritchard, Total War: The Causes and Course of the Second World

War, vol.

On the First World War in East Asia, see Frederick Dickinson, War and National Reinvention: Japan in the Great War, 1914—1919 (Cambridge, MA, 1999), Ian Nish, Alliance in Decline: A Study in Anglo-Japanese Relations, 1908— 1923 (London, 1972) and G. Xu, China and the Great War: China’s Pursuit of a New National Identity and Internationalization (Cambridge, 2005). The best recent study of the Paris Peace Conference from an Asian perspective is Naoko Shimazu, Japan, Race and Equality: The Racial Equality Proposal of1919 (London, 1998). The 1920s are a comparatively neglected decade, but Edmund Fung, The Diplomacy of Imperial Retreat: Britain’s South China Policy, 1924—31 (Oxford, 1991), Akira Iriye, After Imperialism: The Search for a New Order in the Far East, 1921—1931 (Cambridge, MA, 1965), William F.

There are a number of books on the origins and course of the Manchurian crisis, the best of which are James W Morley (ed.), Japan Erupts: The London Naval Conference and the Manchurian Incident, 1928—32 (New York, 1984), Ian Nish, Japan’s Struggle with Internationalism: Japan, China and the League of Nations, 1931—3 (London, 1993) and Christopher Thorne, The Limits of Foreign Policy: The West, the League, and the Far Eastern Crisis of1931—1933 (London, 1972). An important study that emphasizes the reaction of the Japanese people to the Manchurian Crisis is Louise Young, Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism (Berkeley, CA, 1997), but see also Sandra Wilson, The Manchurian Crisis and Japanese Society, 1931—33 (London, 2001), which qualifies some of Young's observations. For pan-Asianism and the ideological roots of Japanese foreign policy, see the following very useful edited collections: Dick Stegewerns (ed.), Nationalism and Internationalism in Imperial Japan: Autonomy, Asian Brotherhood, or World Citizenship? (London, 2003), Narangoa Li and Robert Cribb (eds), Imperial Japan and National Identities in Asia, 1895—1945 (London, 2003) and Sven Saaler and J. Victor Koschmann (eds), Pan-Asianism in Modern Japanese History: Colonialism, Regionalism and Borders (London, 2007).

On Japanese foreign policy in the 1930s, see Michael Barnhart, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919—1941 (Ithaca, NY, 1987), James B. Crowley, Japan’s Quest for Autonomy: National Security and Foreign Policy, 1930—38 (Princeton, NJ, 1966) and James W. Morley (ed.), The China Quagmire:

Japan’s Expansion on the Asian Continent, 1933—1941 (New York, 1983). The Chinese reaction to Japanese imperialism is covered in Parks Coble, Facing Japan: Chinese Politics and Japanese Imperialism, 1931—1937 (Cambridge, MA, 1991) and Youli Sun, China and the Origins of the Pacific War, 1931—1941 (New York,

1993).

The growing rift between Japan and the Anglo-Saxon powers can be studied in Antony Best, Britain, Japan and Pearl Harbor: Avoiding War in East Asia, 1936-41 (London, 1995), Antony Best, British Intelligence and the Japanese Challenge in Asia, 1914-1941 (Basingstoke, 2002), Dorothy Borg and Shumpei Okamoto (eds), Pearl Harbor as History: Japanese-American Relations, 1931-1941 (New York, 1973), Peter Lowe, Great Britain and the Origins of the Pacific War: A Study of British Policy in East Asia, 1937-1941 (Oxford, 1977), Ann Trotter, Britain and East Asia, 1933-1937 (Cambridge, 1975) and Jonathan Utley, Going to War with Japan, 1937-1941 (Knoxville, TN, 1985). The immediate origins of the Pacific War are best covered in Robert Butow, The John Doe Associates: Backdoor Diplomacy for Peace, 1941 (Stanford, CA, 1974), Waldo Heinrichs, Threshold of War: Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Entry into World War Two (New York, 1988), James W Morley (ed.), The Fateful Choice: Japan’s Advance into Southeast Asia, 1939-1941 (New York, 1980) and James W. Morley (ed.), The Final Confrontation: Japan’s Negotiations with the United States, 1941 (New York,

1994).

Finally, there are some good bibliographical essays on the period, notably Michael Barnhart, ‘The Origins of the Second World War in Asia and the Pacific: Synthesis Impossible?', Diplomatic History (1996), vol. 2, pp. 241—60, Louise Young, ‘Japan at War: History Writing on the Crisis of the 1930s', in Gordon Martel (ed.), The Origins of the Second World War Reconsidered (London, 1999), and the relevant chapters in Warren Cohen (ed.), Pacific Passage: The Study of American-East Asian Relations on the Eve of the Twenty-First Century (New York, 1996) and Robert Boyce and Joseph A. Maiolo (eds), The Origins of World War Two: The Debate Continues (Basingstoke, 2003).