Japan and Britain at War and Peace

Edited by Hugo Dobson and Nobuko Kosuge, with contributions by Kimihiko Baba, Hugo Dobson, Reinhard Drifte, C.G.H. Dunlop, Yoichi Kibata, Nobuko Kosuge, Fumitaka Kurosawa, Kei Nemoto, Ian Nish, Caroline Rose, Philip Towle and John Weste.

Since the events of the Second World War the relationship between Japan and Britain has undergone an extraordinary transformation, from bitter conflict to peaceful alliance. “Japan and Britain at War and Peace” is a multilayered examination of this bilateral relationship with an emphasis on the issue of reconciliation. Reconciliation is explored in a broad sense and in a number of areas from economic cooperation and conflict, common concerns in the international system, public and media perceptions of each country, and the efforts of individuals, non-governmental organizations and governments to promote mutual understanding and find strategies to deal with dilemmas. With chapters from an international team of contributors from the UK, Japan, and Australia, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Japanese and British history and international politics.

Japan and Britain at War and Peace is part of the Sheffield Centre for Japanese Studies/Routledge series.

A seminar entitled “Recall, Research and Reconciliation – Perspectives on the Experience of War” was chaired by Professor Hugo Dobson to mark the publication of Japan and Britain at War and Peace.

Other contributors for the seminar include:

Jack Chalker

Jack Chalker was a prisoner of the Japanese Army on the Burma Railway and is an artist and author of “Rekishi Wakai to Taimen Tetsudo” (Historical reconciliation and the Burma Railway), Asahi Publications, December 2008.

Professor Nobuko Kosuge

Professor Nobuko Kosuge is Professor in International Relations in the Faculty of Law at Yamanashi Gakuin University. Her recent publications include  “Britain and Japan in the Twentieth Century: One Hundred Years of Trade and Prejudice” (co-editor, 2007) and “Japanese Prisoners of War” (co-editor, 2000).

Professor Fumitaka Kurosawa

Professor Fumitaka Kurosawa is Professor in Japanese Modern History and Japanese Studies in the Department of Cross-Cultural Studies at Tokyo Woman’s Christian University. His main research interests are the history of modern and contemporary Japan, its political and diplomatic dimensions in the interwar period, and Japan’s military history.

Philip Malins

Philip Malins, MBE, MC is a Dunkirk veteran and a Burma war veteran, and, among many other activities promoting reconciliation, is Chairman of the International Friendship and Reconciliation Trust and was formerly Deputy Chairman of the Burma Campaign Society.

Professor Ian Nish

Professor Ian Nish is Emeritus Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is known for his writings on the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, Japanese foreign policy and Anglo-Japanese relations in the twentieth century.  In 2001, two volumes of his Collected Writings were simultaneously published in Britain and Japan.

Phillida Purvis

Phillida Purvis is Director, Links Japan and Honorary Secretary, The International Friendship and Reconciliation Trust and convenor of the original symposium of this title from which the idea for this publication originates.