Mutual Perceptions and Images in Japanese-German Relations, 1860-2010: (59 Brill's Japanese Studies Library)

Mutual Perceptions and Images in Japanese-German Relations, 1860–2010 examines the mutual images formed between Japan and Germany from the mid-nineteenth to twenty-first centuries, and the influence of these images on the development of bilateral relations. Unlike earlier research on Japanese-German relations, which focused on the similarity of these countries’ historical trajectories, this publication presents a more nuanced picture. It relativizes perceptions of a special “spiritual relationship” between Japan and Germany as well as their commonalities of “national character” through an exploration of previously untapped historical visual and textual sources. With essays by sixteen leading scholars in the field, this collection is an invaluable contribution to the historiography of modern Japan and Germany, and to the field of international relations. Contributors are: Hans-Joachim Bieber, Fukuoka Mariko, Hakoishi Hiroshi, Iwasa Takurō, Katō Yōko, Kawakita Atsuko, Gerhard Krebs, Kudō Akira, Heinrich Menkhaus, Danny Orbach, Peter Pantzer, Sven Saaler, Satō Takumi, Volker Stanzel, Suzuki Naoko, Tajima Nobuo, Tano Daisuke, and Rolf-Harald Wippich.

Table of Contents:
List of illustrations Preface - Volker Stanzel Acknowledgments Notes to Readers Introduction: Japanese-German Mutual Images from the 1860s to the Present - Sven Saaler Part I: Early Encounters 1. Prussia or North Germany? The Image of “Germany” During the Prusso-Japanese Treaty Negotiations in 1860–1861 - Fukuoka Mariko 2. Japanese-German Mutual Perceptions in the 1860s and 1870s: The Eulenburg and Bunkyū Missions - Suzuki Naoko 3. The Image of Prussia in Japan during the Boshin War (1868–1869) - Hakoishi Hiroshi Part II: Perceptions of a “Golden Age” of Japanese-German Relations 4. Katsura Tarō’s Experiences in Germany and Kido Takayoshi’s Ideas on a Constitution - Katō Yōko 5. The Image of Japan and the Japanese in the German Satirical Journals Kladderadatsch and Simplicissimus, 1853–1914 - Rolf-Harald Wippich 6. Images of Japan Held by German Legal Experts in the Meiji Period - Heinrich Menkhaus 7. Japan in Early Twentieth-century European Picture Postcards - Peter Pantzer Part III: Drifting Apart: Tensions and War 8. The Image of Germany in Japanese Politics and Society, 1890–1914 - Sven Saaler 9. Rathenau and Ludendorff: Two Japanese Images of Germany in World War I - Kudō Akira 10. Images of Japan and East Asia in German Politics in the Early Nazi Era - Tajima Nobuo Part IV: Idealization of “The Other” in the Age of Totalitarianism 11. “Strength Through Joy” in Japan: Mutual Perceptions of Leisure Movements in Germany and Japan, 1935–1942 - Tano Daisuke 12. Images of German-Japanese Similarities and Affinities in National-Socialist Germany (1933–1945) - Hans-Joachim Bieber 13. German Perspectives on Japanese Heroism During the Nazi Era - Gerhard Krebs 14. Colonialism Through the Mirror: Japan in the Eyes of the SS and the German Conservative Resistance - Danny Orbach Part V: Post-war Images 15. Images of Japan in Post-war German Media: How the “Past” is Used to Reinforce Images of Self and Other - Kawakita Atsuko 16. The Consumption of Nazi Images in Post-war Japanese Popular Culture -Satō Takumi 17 German and European Academic Images of Japan: The “Group Model” and the “Cultural Importer Model” from the 1970s to the 1990s - Iwasa Takurō Contributors Index

About the Author :
Sven Saaler, Ph.D., Bonn University, is Professor of Modern Japanese History at Sophia University in Tokyo. He has written intensively on the history of regionalism in East Asia, on history controversies in Japan and on Japanese-German relations. Kudō Akira is Professor Emeritus of The University of Tokyo. A graduate from the Graduate School of Economics of The University of Tokyo, he has intensively published on Japanese-German business and economic relations. Tajima Nobuo, Ph.D., Sapporo University, is professor at Seijō University in Tokyo. He has published monographs and articles on the Far Eastern policies of Germany during the Nazi era and Japanese-German relations in general.

Review :
‘The very instructive volume can be recommended to everyone interested in Japan and its relation with Germany.’ Christian W. Spang, Daitō Bunka University, Tokyo, Contemporary Japan, DOI: 10.1080/18692729.2018.1468641