When Emperor Hirohito announced defeat in a radio broadcast on 15th August 1945, Japan was not merely a nation; it was a colossal empire stretching from the tip of Alaska to the fringes of Australia grown out of a colonial ideology that continued to pervade East Asian society for years after the end of the Second World War. In Overcoming Empire in Post-Imperial East Asia: Repatriation, Redress and Rebuilding, Barak Kushner and Sherzod Muminov bring together an international team of leading scholars to explore the post-imperial history of the region.

From international aid to postwar cinema to chemical warfare, these essays all focus on the aftermath of Japan's aggressive warfare and the new international strategies which Japan, China, Taiwan, North and South Korea utilised following the end of the war and the collapse of Japan's empire. The result is a nuanced analysis of the transformation of postwar national identities, colonial politics, and the reordering of society in East Asia. With its innovative comparative and transnational perspective, this book is essential reading for scholars of modern East Asian history, the cold war, and the history of decolonisation.

Barak Kushner is Professor of East Asian History at the University of Cambridge, UK. He is the author of Men to Devils, Devils to Men: Japanese War Crimes and Chinese Justice (2015), Slurp! A Culinary and Social History of Ramen (2012), and The Thought War: Japanese Imperial Propoganda (2006).

Sherzod Muminov is Lecturer in Japanese History at the University of East Anglia, UK. He is the co-editor of Japan's Empire in East Asia (co-edited with Barak Kushner, 2017).