World War I and the Triumph of a New Japan 1919-1930

Frederick R. Dickinson illuminates a new integrative history of interwar Japan that highlights the transformative effects of the Great War far from the Western Front. World War I and the Triumph of a New Japan 19191930 reveals how Japan embarked upon a decade of national reconstruction following the Paris Peace Conference rivalling the monumental rebuilding efforts in post-Versailles Europe. Taking World War I as his anchor Dickinson examines the structural foundations of a new Japan discussing the country''s wholehearted participation in new post-war projects of democracy internationalism disarmament and peace. Dickinson proposes that Japan''s renewed drive for military expansion in the 1930s marked less a failure of Japan''s interwar culture than the start of a tumultuous domestic debate over the most desirable shape of Japan''s twentieth-century world. This stimulating study will engage students and researchers alike offering a unique global perspective of interwar Japan.