Reorienting Empires
Hanama Tasaki’s Long the Imperial Way and Postwar American Culture
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12469743 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Edward Chi Ho Tang (0000-0001-6899-6447, corresponding author), Edward Tang |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 17 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 31-59 |
| Publication date | 2014-02-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Asian American Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1096-8598 • E-ISSN: 1097-2129 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/jaas.2014.0007 |
| OpenAlex | W2015865309 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 30 |
This article examines Hanama Tasaki’s antiwar novel, Long the Imperial Way (1950), as a key text in the postwar era. Based on the author’s own experiences, the book focuses on a disillusioned Japanese soldier in the Imperial Army as it occupies China in the late 1930s. This English-language work by the Hawai’i-born Nisei writer explained the destructiveness of Japanese imperialism in East Asia for an American nation now reasserting its own presence in the region. Offering lessons about the limits of imperial desires, the novel resonated with audiences wary of US overseas involvements. As a public figure, Tasaki embodied “Japanese” and “American” identities, negotiating between them by playing on the “absent presence” of his Nisei subjectivity. His life story thus raised questions about race, empire, and national loyalties, even as he aspired to transcend them in his plea for universal rights based on democratic ideals
Ancient history · China · Democracy · Dilemma · Embodied cognition · Empire · Negotiation · Plea · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Subjectivity · Asian American and Pacific Histories · Gender Studies · History · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Philosophy · Race, History, and American Society
Haiboku o dakishimete
Transnational Criticism and Asian Immigrant Literature in the U.S.
And the View from the Shore
Collaboration and Translation
Theorizing Asian American Fiction
Between Two Empires
Perilous Memories
The Unpredictability of the Past
The Cold War and the Color Line
Impossible Subjects
Cold War Orientalism
The American Occupation of Japan
Race for EmpireKoreans as Japanese and Japanese as Americans during World War II
Kennan, “Universalism,” and the Truman Doctrine
Revisiting America's Occupation of Japan
The Artist Belongs to the People
Absent Images of Memory
Unlikely Liberators
Hijacked by Utopia
Denationalization Reconsidered
The Meaning of Loyalty
Trans-Pacific Racisms and the U.S. Occupation of Japan
Redefining American Literary History
Attitudes Toward the Korean War
The Quarter's Polls
Power and Connection
An Absent Presence
The Cold War American West, 1945-1989
War, Occupation, and Creativity
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |