Japanese Geopolitics and the Western Imagination

This book is the first attempt to comprehensively introduce Japanese geopolitics. Europe's role in disseminating knowledge globally to shape the world according to its standards is an unchallenged premise in world politics. In this story, Japan is regarded as an enthusiastic importer of the knowledge. The book challenges this ground by examining how European geopolitics, the theory of the modern state, traveled to Japan in the first half of the last century, and demonstrates that the same theory can invoke diverged imaginations of the world by examining a range of historical, political, and literary texts. Focusing on the transformation of power, knowledge, and subjectivity in time and space, Watanabe provides a detailed account to reconsider the formation of contemporary world order of the modern territorial states.

Includes a fresh approach to understanding the formation of a contemporary world of diverse forms of state Situates the discussion in a wider context of global intellectual history by going beyond national and disciplinary boundaries Highlights the importance of the act of knowing and the cognitive gaps that have arisen in the course of political theory's travel

Auteur
Atsuko Watanabe is Associate Professor at Hosei University, Japan and formerly held an associate fellowship at the Centre of the Study of Globalization and Regionalization at the University of Warwick, UK.

Contenu
1: Introduction: Standing in a Place, Imagining a Space.- 2: Contextualizing Traveling Theory.- 3: Inside of the Place of Interpretation.- 4: Analytical Framework.- 5: Identifying the Site of Creation.- 6: The Importation of Geopolitics into Japan.- 7: Japanese Geopolitics.- 8: Conclusion: A Successful Journey?.