Though it lasted for only 50 years, the Japanese empire forever changed the geopolitical balance in Asia and left a complex legacy that endures to this day. Historian Justin M. Jacobs takes you on a thematic tour of five fascinating topics in the history of the Japanese empire: politics, tourism, baseball, zoos, and video games. He provides a nuanced overview based on the latest scholarship and shares copious slides.
Jacobs, a professor of history at American University, is the author of several books, including The Compensations of Plunder: How China Lost Its Treasures.
Session Information
Tourism
After 1895, the Japanese state began to expand beyond its home islands to Taiwan, Korea, Manchuria, and Micronesia—and Japanese tourists followed close behind. Jacobs looks at how these colonies were acquired, the policies adopted to govern them, and how Japanese tourists interacted with lands and people who were at once both familiar and strange. He also explores how such interactions changed over the five decades of empire.
Additional Sessions of Japanese Empire Series
General Information
