Will I love Japan's Total Empire?

When people ask for book recommendations on Japan’s empire, Louise Young's Japan’s Total Empire usually tops my list. Young focuses on the empire in Manchuria from 1931 to 1945, and highlights Manchuria as more than a Japanese military conquest—it was also a vast cultural project that mobilized the nation behind state intervention at home and imperial expansion abroad. To tell this story, Young focuses on much more than the army and civilian bureaucracy—she also shows how an ideal Manchukuo was imagined by multiple actors, from the mass media and business groups to intellectuals, settlers, and grassroots associations. Empire in Manchuria… show more.

Young's now-classic book delves into the birth of Manchukuo during a precarious time for imperial Japan. Her excellent use of statistics from Japanese colonial sources illuminates Japanese settlement in the new state, and also reveals much of the ideology behind the Japanese colonists who developed and settled an area that served as a reservoir for individuals and corporations to realize their utopian dreams.