Conclusions to Part II

Abstract

During the nineteenth century, China, Japan, and Korea shared a common crisis defined by a dual encounter, not only with an overwhelmingly powerful West, but also with the profoundly disruptive idea set of modernity. This dual encounter profoundly threatened the traditional forms of society and relationship in Northeast Asia (NEA). That the local responses to this were fraught, differentiated, and conflictual is hardly surprising. What is perhaps more surprising is how shared, and in many ways similar, their responses to the Western challenge have become. Japan led the way, but South Korea, Taiwan, and increasingly China have now caught up, and NEA’s place in global international society is largely restored. From an outsider perspective, there is more that unites these countries in both the Asian tragedy of the nineteenth and early-mid twentieth centuries, and the new Asia emerging over the last several decades, than divides them. As noted in ...