The media has devoted considerable coverage to the Dr. Feelgoods of Japanese history who have vainly struggled to assert a vindicating and exonerating version of Japan's shared history with Asia. Their attempts to promote a whitewashed narrative have met with repudiation by school boards around the nation, although the public appetite for this beguiling effort to minimize, mitigate and shift responsibility for various atrocities carried out by the Imperial armed forces is surprisingly robust.
In "Tensions of Empire," Ken'ichi Goto takes issue with this blinkered history and provides an illuminating analysis of contemporary debates about Japanese imperialism in China and Southeast Asia, 1937-1945. He represents the many progressive Japanese who are not burying their heads in nationalist myopia.
This is an excellent collection of articles written by Japan's foremost historian of Japan's evolving relations with Southeast Asia during the 20th century. Goto refutes the widely held view that Japan invaded Southeast Asia in 1941 to liberate Asian people from Western colonialism.