Inheritance of Loss

China, Japan, and the Political Economy of Redemption after Empire

Yukiko Koga

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780226412276
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

How do contemporary generations come to terms with losses inflicted by imperialism, colonialism, and war that took place decades ago? How do descendants of perpetrators and victims establish new relations in today's globalized economy? With Inheritance of Loss, Yukiko Koga approaches these questions through the unique lens of inheritance, focusing on Northeast China, the former site of the Japanese puppet state Manchukuo, where municipal governments now court Japanese as investors and tourists. As China transitions to a market-oriented society, this region is restoring long-neglected colonial-era structures to boost tourism and inviting former colonial industries to create special economic zones, all while inadvertently unearthing chemical weapons abandoned by the Imperial Japanese Army at the end of World War II. Inheritance of Loss chronicles these sites of colonial inheritance––tourist destinations, corporate zones, and mustard gas exposure sites––to illustrate attempts by ordinary Chinese and Japanese to reckon with their shared yet contested pasts. In her explorations of everyday life, Koga directs us to see how the violence and injustice that occurred after the demise of the Japanese Empire compound the losses that later generations must account for, and inevitably inherit.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Prologue and Acknowledgments
• 1.  Introduction: Colonial Inheritance and the Topography of After Empire
• 2.  Inheritance and Betrayal: Historical Preservation and Colonial Nostalgia in Harbin
• 3.  Memory, Postmemory, Inheritance: Postimperial Topography of Guilt in Changchun
• 4.  The Political Economy of Redemption: Middle-Class Dreams in the Dalian Special Economic Zone
• 5.  Industrious Anxiety: Labor and Landscapes of Modernity in Dalian
• 6.  Epilogue: Deferred Reckoning and the Double Inheritance
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index