EU-East Asia relations… Angela Merkel and Japan’s Wartime Past 11 Mar 201511 Mar 2015 The German Chancellor was in Tokyo for a couple of eventful days. Although Merkel sees Abe Shinzo regularly, she noted before leaving that she has not been to Japan, the country that…
history and memory… Xi Jinping’s Tripod: Updating the National Humiliation Narrative in Nanjing 22 Dec 2014 This essay was originally published at the China Policy Institute Blog at the University of Nottingham on 15 December 2014, under the title 'Xi Jinping’s Nanking Massacre Commemoration and China’s Anti-Japanese Calendar,'…
Chinese nationalism… The Nanking Massacre Anniversary and the CCP’s Politics of History 13 Dec 201413 Dec 2014 Since 1949, the Chinese government's interpretation of the history of World War II seems to be continuously changing in order to adapt to local circumstances and contemporary political needs. If…
Chinese communist party… The Shenyang Trials of 1956: Presenting the Resurrection of Defeat in Heidelberg 1 Oct 2014 The University of Heidelberg will be hosting a conference later this month on post-1945 war crimes trials in East Asia, at which I will be presenting. An abstract and bio…
China… Chongqing Hothouse: At Rana Mitter’s Wiles Lectures at Queen’s University, Belfast 30 May 201428 Aug 2015 Rana Mitter, a major historian of early 20th-century China, is currently in Belfast delivering a series of lectures (which I am attending and commenting on) on the history of Chongqing…
Sino-Japanese Relations Talking Sino-Japanese Relations in Leeds 22 Jan 2014 My colleague Caroline Rose has been very generous in inviting me to join two conferences of the Sino-Japanese Research Network in the past year. With a focus on contemporary history…
China… Hatoyama in Nanking 17 Jan 2013 Hatoyama Yukio [ 鳩山由紀夫] is the former Prime Minister of Japan (2009-2010) and the grandson of Hatoyama Ichiro [鳩山 一郎]. Today, he continues on a somewhat quixotic but surely very necessary…
Chinese nationalism… 15 Questions re: Jeff Kingston’s Japan Focus Essay (2008) Regarding the Nanking Massacre 30 Oct 2012 Dr. Jeff Kingston is a historian of contemporary Japan who occupies a number of important positions at Temple University's Japan campus. In 2008, he published the following essay on the…
German-Japanese Relations… Nanking Film Trailers 22 Oct 2012 Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman, "Nanking," 2007, a documentary interspersing authentic historical footage with reenacted readings of journals, diaries, and letters by Westerners who were in the Chinese capital city…
Sino-Japanese Relations Sino-Japanese Strife and Accomodation: An Academic View 10 Oct 2012 Sometimes through all the contemporary hyperventilating, it can be considered an almost extreme position to look for historical context that lies apart from the mainstream narrative of eternal, almost existential,…
Adam Cathcart 