Taisho Year Fifteen: Imperial Japan from an East Asian Perspective (1912–1926)

From 1912 to 1926, those brief fifteen years marked the early years of the Republic of China, while in Japan they encompassed the entire Taisho era. During this period, China’s Beiyang warlords clashed with the southern government, eventually leading to the unification of the country under the southern Kuomintang. In Japan, meanwhile, the old domain cliques and popular political parties continued their fierce struggle. The military establishment quietly rose to power in the process, taking control of the government in the early Showa era and bringing about the most important transformation in the modernization of Japanese politics. Yet for most readers, the history of these fifteen years remains unfamiliar and indistinct. Drawing on extensive primary sources and research on modern Chinese and Japanese history, this book takes political and diplomatic history as its core and offers a systematic account, from a comparative historical perspective, of the dramatic changes in both countries and the tensions and clashes between them during this period. It also interweaves true historical stories and brief introductions to the broader currents of the world at the time, hoping to give readers a clearer understanding of the history of the Taisho era and early Republican China.