|
|
|
Book Review
Asia
| Christian Henriot and Wen-hsin Yeh, editors. In the Shadow of the Rising Sun: Shanghai under Japanese Occupation. (Cambridge Modern China Series.) New York: Cambridge University Press. 2004. Pp. xii, 392. $75.00.
|
| In their preface and introduction, the editors of this important volume make it clear that the focus of the contributors will go far beyond customary topics related to warfare and politics. In order to explore the wider domains of culture and economics, 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?" (pp. x–xi). 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. |
1
|
|
Henriot discusses the fortunes of Shanghai's industry during the eight-year crisis period. He finds that the structure and geography of industry changed markedly. Large industrial plants of the pre-1937 era struggled under the tight controls of the Japanese military and the various puppet regimes. At the same time, new enterprises and small workshops, better able to escape controls and participate in the black market, emerged and flourished in the western parts of the city. Parks M. Coble presents a case study of the Rong family enterprises (textiles and flour milling) to illustrate the options sometimes opened and sometimes closed to large-scale companies accustomed to dominating the market. The Rong managers were nothing if not adaptable in maintaining ties with both Chongqing and the Japanese Imperial Army but in the end, geography played a large role in determining their fate. Factories unlucky enough to have been located in Chinese portions of the city were mostly destroyed or confiscated; those in the foreign sectors survived and kept the family afloat. |
. . . |
There are about 735 more words in this article.
Please log in (or, if you are not yet an
authorized user, please go to the
User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
|