One essay, 9-10 typed pages of text (not including endnotes and bibliography).Your essay should be based on a minimum of two books which deal with your topic. The topics listed below are deliberately broad and simply suggestive. Feel free to define your own topic and central questions, in consultation with the professor.All papers must adhere to the department style sheet, copies of which are available at Adm. 731 or on the Department of History's web page. Due in class on 5/9.

1. Analyze government-business relations in prewar or postwar Japan, or both.  Select a book from the Booklist (History 459/659 Booklist) from categories D, E and G--especially Marshall, Roberts, Chalmers Johnson's MITI, Samuels, Hirschmeir and Yui, Andrew Gordon’s Evolution of Labor Relations, Lockwood's The Economic Development of Japan, Cohen, Dore and Sinha, Japan and World Depression, Hadley, George Allen's The Japanese Economy, Wm. Wray, Nakamura, Economic Growth in Prewar Japan, Richard Samuels’ The Business of the Japanese State

2. Discuss Japan's cultural and diplomatic/military relationship to other Asian societies (China, Korea, Taiwan, Southeast Asia).  Evaluate Pan-Asianism or Japan as colonizer and occupier.  See category C (and G)--especially Conroy, Jansen's Japanese and Sun Yat-sen, Boyle, Bunker, Joyce Lebra's Japanese-Trained Armies in SE Asia, Iriye's Chinese and Japanese, Coox and Conroy, Newell, McCoy, Ramon Myers and Mark Peattie, Lawrence Olson, Eto and Jansen's My Thirty-Three Years' Dream, Thorne's Issue of War, Peattie's Nan'yo.

3. Was there a "road to Pearl Harbor"?  Discuss Japanese foreign policy before 1945.  See C--especially Iriye (After Imperialism, Across the Pacific and Power and Culture, Crowley, Ogata, Bamba, Okamoto, Thorne, Dower's War, Morley's Japan's Thrust into Siberia, Butow's Tojo, Hata, Borg and Okamoto (see also Crowley essay in Morley's Japan's Foreign Policy), Barnhart.

4. How repressive was the prewar Japanese state?  Or, how did intellectuals fare under state controls?  See A, B, D, E--especially Mitchell's Thought Control, Censorship, Notehelfer, Bowen, Shillony's Politics and Culture, Haven's Valley of Darkness, Akita, Rubin, Kasza, Hori, Hirai, Hoston, Nolte, Neary.

5. Interpret the political events of the 1930s.  Fascism, militarism or what?  See B, C, D, E--especially Fletcher, George Wilson's Radical Nationalist, Shillony's Revolt in Japan, Maruyama, Titus, Peattie's Ishiwara, Smethurst, Berger, Oka.

6. To what extent has Japanese society changed since 1868?  You may emphasize the postwar or the prewar.  Consider change and continuity in any of the following areas:  village life, urban life, labor-management relations, status of women, education, treatment of minorities, religion, environmental problems, law.  See D, F, G--especially Embree, Dore's Shinohata, Robert J. Smith's Kurusu, Beardsley et al.  (all village studies); Land Reform, Smethurst's Agricultural Development, Waswo, Francks; Vogel (new middle class); Passin, Cummings (education); Robert J. Smith's The Women of Suye Mura, and Tamanoi, Under the Shadow of Nationalism (prewar women) Gail Bernstein's Haruko's World, Pharr, Takie Lebra, Imamura, Joyce Lebra's Women in Changing Japan; Mitchell's The Korean Minority, DeVos and Wagatsuma (burakumin); White, Allinson's Japanese Urbanism, Andrew Gordon, Dore's City Life, Ayusawa, Dore's British Factory/Japanese Factory (labor); Huddle & Reich (environment); Hardacre's books on new religions; Upham (law).

7. Did the Occupation bring about significant changes?  Were they beneficial?  Would postwar Japanese society and politics look much different if the Americans had not attempted to carry out sweeping reforms?  See G--especially Dower's Empire, Kawai, Nishi, Hadley, Dore, Minear, Ward and Sakamoto, Beate Sirota. The Only Woman in the Room (memoir of the American woman who wrote the civil rights section of the Japanese postwar constitution)--see also essay on her by Susan Pharr in Democratizing Japan. many books on the Constitution, e.g. Koseki.

8. How would you explain the failure of prewar or postwar socialism and Communism (or social movements like the postwar Citizen's Movement)?  See A, B, D, E, G--especially Totten (prewar social democrats), Allan Cole et al. (postwar socialists), Beckmann and Okubo, Scalapino's Japanese Communist Movement, Waswo, Henry Smith, Large (2 books on labor), Scalapino's Labor Movement, Joe Moore, Gordon, Packard, Steiner and Krause, Krause's Japanese Radicals, Duke, Thurston, Chalmers Johnson's Conspiracy at Matsukawa, McKean.

9. Prewar parties and/or the Meiji constitutional structure.  Did the Meiji Constitution prevent the growth of stable party government?  Could the established parties (i.e., Seiyukai, Kenseikai, Minseito, etc.) and liberals have done more to promote parliamentary and social democracy?  Or, were they doomed from the start?  How would you assess the earlier popular Rights Movement as a liberal or Berger, Najita's Hara Kei, Scalapino's Democracy, Bowen, Akita, Ike's Beginnings of Political Democracy, Beckmann's Meiji Constitution, Miller, Garon.

10. Drawing on the prewar and postwar record, how does one explain the continued rule of the Liberal Democratic Party?  Can it last?  Strengths and weaknesses?  See G--especially Thayer, Curtis, Fukui, Stockwin, Tsurutani, Watanuki, Hrebenar, Schlesinger.

11. Assess the impact of the bureaucracy on prewar or postwar politics, or both.See the T.J. Pempel book, read Chalmers Johnson's MITI or Kubota and consider the assigned textbook by Frank Gibney, Unlocking the Bureaucrat’s Kingdom.  Or read all of the bureaucracy-related essays in the following:  Najita and Koschmann's Conflict in Modern Japanese History (Silberman essay), James Morley's Dilemmas of Growth (Spaulding), George M. Wilson's Crisis Politics (Spaulding), Robert E. Ward and Dankwart Rustow's Political Modernization in Japan and Turkey (Inoki), Garon, in J. of Asian Studies (May 1984).

12. Analyze the sources of 20th Century economic growth.  Be historical.  See D, G--especially George C. Allen's The Japanese Economy, Nakamura, Yamamura, Yoshino, Patrick and Rosovsky, Chalmers Johnson's MITI, Lockwood (either Economic Development of Japan or The State and Economic Enterprise, Dore and Sinha, Japan and World Depression, Dore's Taking Japan Seriously and Flexible Rigidities, Laura Hein’s Feuling Growth. The Energy Revolution and Economic Policy in Postwar Japan (1990).

13. Analyze the plans to end the Pacific War. What were the major options and what factors, political or otherwise, influenced the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan? John Ray Skates, The Invasion of Japan (1994); Thomas B. Allen and Norman Polman, Codename Downfall: The Secret Plan to Invade Japan (1995); Leon Sigal, Fighting to a Finish. The Politics of War Termination; CIA, "The Final Months of the War with Japan" (Intelligence Monograph, 1998), available at www.odci.gov/csi/monograph.