Urs Matthias Zachmann has produced a work that is fresh and much needed. In chapter four, for example, on China's Hundred Days Reform of 1898, Zachmann alludes to conventional scholarly views that Chinese reforms aroused great optimism in Japan, that Japanese newspapers and magazines covered the reforms around the memorials of Kang Youwei and the edicts of the Guangxu Emperor, and that the Japanese government actively supported the reforms. “[N]one of these is true” (p. 89), Zachmann writes. Zachmann's meticulous attention to Japan here is typical of his study. No comparable attention is given to China – nor is that needed. The function of China is captured in the index entry, “China, role of, in Japanese discourse.” The study's abiding concern is in Japan's changing perceptions of itself in a world dominated by the “civilized” West. China is a prism through which that is traced. In light of this, a clearer book title might have read, “Japan and China in the Late Meiji Period” (with Japan as the lead word), and a subtitle like “China in Japan's Public Discourse on National Identity, 1895–1904.”

The period 1895–1904, Zachmann writes, was a watershed decade that saw Japan go “from a regional power in the shadow of China and Russia to the status of the new key power in East Asia” (p. 1). During these same years China can be viewed from a variety of angles or perspectives depending upon one's sources. For his own source materials, Zachmann chooses leading Japanese newspapers and public reports of the day. This choice imposes “severe limitations” (p. 7), he confesses, but is actually a strength that sets the study apart because of rich materials carefully mined around this topic now for the first time.

Chapter one sets the stage by looking at Japanese ideas of China in the Tokugawa and early Meiji periods, prior to the war of 1894–95. Chapters two through five constitute the core chapters. These track Japanese perceptions through four dramatic episodes known to all students of East Asian history: the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95; the partition of China crisis of 1897–98; China's Hundred Days Reform of 1898; and the Boxer Uprising and aftermath, 1900–1904.

In the years leading up to the Sino-Japanese War, Japan was confronted by a “double inferiority complex” (p. 29), Zachmann notes – the nagging sense of ongoing Chinese condescension combined now with an overwhelming sense of Western condescension and the challenge of Western “civilization” (bunmei). Japan's victory of 1894–95 brought a sense of triumphalism over China. Toward the West, however, the Triple Intervention of Russia, France, and Germany that forced Japan to retrocede the Liaodong Peninsula back to China brought humiliation and anxiety. In its aftermath, the Japanese government poured an astonishing 58 per cent of its 1897 budget into military spending (p. 47). Although the Sino-Japanese War had nurtured an internal view of Japan as “an empire,” post-war government policies remained cautious and prudent as the government downplayed overseas economic expansion and initiatives, including towards China.

The Far Eastern Crisis of 1897–98, the focus of chapter three, saw Germany, Russia, Britain, and France move to acquire special privileges and leaseholds in China. The Japanese government, plagued by the rise and fall of cabinets from 1896 to 1901, remained largely disengaged from China despite calls by certain groups to “protect China.” Voices in the media, meanwhile, began to express views of Japan having a civilizing mission “to lead China” as the “master” of East Asia. Here, writes Zachmann, “power politics and professed idealism” come together, as they had in Western imperialist thinking (pp. 84–88).

At the time of China's Hundred Days Reform of 1898, Japan was largely indifferent to Chinese endeavours. The failure of Chinese reforms ended up having a liberating effect on Japan, because failure and weakness removed the sense of threat so that China could be embraced as a friend. Japan, a “modernized state,” now spoke more openly of its “duty” to come to China's rescue. The idea to “protect China” entered into the realm of mainstream policy and discourse.

China's Boxer Uprising of 1899–1900, the final chapter, leads to foreign military intervention in China to quell the Boxers. In discussing that intervention, the author cites not a single Chinese-language source – nor does he need to. Zachmann rather follows the lead of his Japanese sources. These “completely ignored” China, he writes, because of their attention “solely on Japan's competition with the Western powers” (p. 128). Japan out to prove itself to the world, displays an “intense yearning for sympathy” and shows itself “morbidly anxious for praise” (p. 144). It accepts Britain's invitation to send additional troops into China “for the sake of civilization” (p. 128, 136, 145), and is handsomely rewarded in January 1902 with the Anglo-Japanese Alliance aimed implicitly against Russia. Meanwhile, China in Japanese sources ends up “a powerless nonentity” – “so utterly powerless” as to be degraded to the same level as Korea (pp. 146, 148). In 1904, when Japan goes to war with Russia, Japan presents itself “as the disinterested champion of Chinese and Korean integrity and independence” (p. 148), even as it coerces China to declare neutrality on its own soil and then excludes China from the peace negotiations.

In short, between 1895 and 1904 Japan finds itself transformed from a cautious and anxious entity uncertain about China and deferential toward the “civilized” West, to an independent actor on the regional and international stage. A watershed era for Japan and East Asia, Zachmann ably charts the transformation of Japanese self-perceptions against developments in China. As for China itself, the book makes no attempt to uncover anything new. Students of modern China need nonetheless to read this book, since it tracks Japan's road to expansion with primary reference to China. Unfortunately, the book's steep price puts it out of reach of most personal libraries.