Japan's cultural policy toward China, 1918-1931
Subtitle: a comparative perspective
By: See Heng Teow.
Series: Harvard East Asian monographs ;; 175
Publisher: Harvard University Asia Center; Distributed by Harvard University Press
Published: 1999
Place of publication: Cambridge, Mass
Language: eng
Number of pages: 310
Subjects: Japan -- Relations -- China.; China -- Relations -- Japan.; Japan -- Cultural policy.
Description: Most existing scholarship on Japan's cultural policy toward modern China reflects the paradigm of cultural imperialism and emphasizes a linear pattern of Japanese cultural aggression, particularly after 1923 and the establishment of the China Cultural Affairs Bureau. In contrast, this study demonstrates that Japan, like the other Great Powers, was motivated by pragmatic interests, international cultural rivalries, ethnocentrism, moralism, and idealism.

The author argues that Japanese policy can best be understood as the promotion of its own experience of development, which stressed the civilizing aspects of East Asian civilization, modernization, and the promotion of Japanese culture and interests.
Notes: Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral--Harvard University) under the title: Japan's cultural policy towards China, 1918-1931.
Includes bibliographical references (p. [277]-293) and index.