I am in a history of modern east Asia class in university and usually don't find it hard to pick essay topics /thesis but i cant seem to find a good one for this course. my chosen topic is Japanese imperialism and the only ideas i have so far are 1) how was the rise Japanese imperialism different from European imperialism 2) elements that are uniquely Japanese or asian in Japanese war doctrine/strategy and the army and navy. my problem with the first one is that i would also have to research alot about European imperialism so it would be a lot more work. but if you know some good points please tell. Anyway anyone with alot of knowledge about Japanese imperialism if you could think of some good easy to reasech essay topics that would help me alot thanks!!
Comfort women and their role in Japanese imperialism An exploration of Japanese justifications for their imperialism The role of the emperor in Japanese imperialism--some say the Emperor was just a figurehead, others that he was central to the activities of the war. The beginnings of Japanese imperialism as seen in the Russo-Japanese war or the Japanese annexation of Korea Something about Manchukuo (Japanese imperialist name for Manchuria) Something about unit 731.
I'd steer away from making statements in your paper about elements that were uniquely Japanese, simply because it probably isn't uniquely Japanese, and in any event the idea that things are uniquely Japanese is a common trope when talking about Japan, both within Japan and by non-Japanese people. I mean, you can still talk about how Japan did x or y, but to truly make claims of uniqueness, you'd have to do a lot of other research to make a case that a given practice never occurred anywhere else.
If you mention what your main focus in school is, I can maybe make suggestions on that basis. That is, are you an historian? Or an English major? Etc.
I would discourage both of those research topics. Here's why: They both rely on an assumption that countries are inherently unique. While things are obviously different from place to place, part of the historian's job is to explain how they came to be different, rather than assuming some sort of unchanging cultural essence. It seems like both of those papers would start with some awful line like "Japanese culture has always....."
Personally, I think the most interesting and historically influential part of Japanese Imperialism is the assimilation program that was run in places like Okinawa, Korea, and Taiwan. Basically, the colonial governments believed that people could become "Japanese" and went about trying to force them to do so. That they would even believe that was possible shows how different the definitions of being "Japanese" were during the imperial period (less emphasis on ethnicity). The attack on native culture and the backlash over the coercive nature of the programs (especially the name changing campaign in Korea) are major reasons that there's still so much resentment in some places.
As an educator, I think it would be a good exercise for you to try and think about how the categories we use to classify people change over time, and what the political implications of how we define people are. Mr. /u/Aidancole, tear down these mental walls that cause you to default to boring topics like the ones you listed!
Here are a few books / articles to get you started:
Leo T. S. Ching - Becoming "Japanese": Colonial Taiwan and the Politics of Identity Formation
Mark Caprio - Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945
Steve Rabson - Assimilation Policy in Okinawa: Promotion, Resistance, and "Reconstruction"
Oguma Eiji - A Geneology of 'Japanese' self images
Some Japanese words that commonly get thrown around and may help you search articles:
Kōminka - "imperialization" (sometimes called "japanization")
dōka - "assimilation"
naisen ittai - "Japan and Korea as one body"