In the Shadow of the Rising Sun: Shanghai under Japanese Occupation (Cambridge Modern China Series)

Product Description

Rejecting conventional demands, this book examines how ordinary men and women, Chinese as well as foreign, endured the Japanese military assault and occupation of Shanghai during the Chinese War of Resistance (1937-1945). Instead of presenting their stories in terms of heroic resistance versus shameful collaboration with the enemy, the volume reveals how the city’s dwellers mobilized a variety of social networks to circumvent enemy strictures. They employed strategies that kept alive a culture and an economy that were vital to the survival of the brutalized population.

Review

“Christian Henriot and Wen-hsin Yeh ask what the war years 1937-1945 meant to the civilian population of the great metropolis. They ask how the brutality of siege and occupation changed ‘civic patterns of authority and association’ and how they reconfigured ‘the material landscape of the city?’ To the credit of editors and essayists alike, this sweeping study of Shanghai under Japanese occupation answers those questions and many others and illuminates our understanding of wartime struggle and survival in China’s most modern and international city.”

“The clear contribution of this volume is its success in providing a more diverse perspective of the Sino-Japanese War.” The Journal of Asian Studies Larry Shyu, University of New Brunswick

“Generally speaking, the fourteen essays that comprise this collection probe the grey areas that characterized life in Shanghai during the occupation, and grey areas there surely were―between, for example, collaboration and resistance, or hero and traitor…. Most people inhabited the space between extremes, and it is here, in the realm of the ordinary, that these essays make their mark. Well-researched, cogently presented, and generally quite readable, they add texture and depth to our understanding of the ways by which Chinese living in their nation’s most important metropolitan center dealt with the dislocations imposed by the war and occupation…. This collection is a most welcome addition to the field.” – Journal of Asian History

Book Description

The authors of this 2004 volume examine the Chinese War of Resistance against the Japanese in the Shanghai area.