1. The U.S. occupation in Japan after the WWII is often regarded by some scholars as a colonial period in Japanese history. However, no matter how you define this period, the U.S. occupation reforms have fundamentally transformed Japan into a democratic country. Please describe in details how these reforms effected this transformation. In answering this question, you also need to discuss the nature of Japanese society before the U.S. occupation.
2. In general, it was the fundamental conflict between political/social results of modernization/industrialization and Mao’s social revolutionary agenda that led to Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Please discuss specifically what were the projects of Chinese industrialization, its political and social results, and how they were contradictory to Mao’s socialist revolution agendas.
3. Please discuss the early stages of Chinese economic reform that started in 1979 to 1990s to answer the following questions: what was the economic reform? How did it proceed specifically? What were its economic, political and social results? How has it changed the nature of Chinese economic system and social structure?
4. The hallmark of contemporary Japan is her high speed economic development. Please identify the key factors that have contributed to this phenomenon. On the other hand Japan’s economy experienced a long-term recession since 1990. Please identify some weakness in Japanese economy.
5. Kimura Takuji, in his ‘Nanking: Denial and Atonement in Contemporary Japan,’ traces different arguments from both left and right on Nanjing/Nanking Atrocity. These arguments reflect not just historians’ perspectives on the issue but also political and social changes in contemporary Japan. Please discuss the political, historical and social contexts for both liberal and conservative arguments/views and their political motivations and agendas.
6. At the heart of modern East Asian history have been the efforts of East Asian people to transform the traditional polities into modern nation-states, the Confucian orthodoxy into an ideology that could help shape the modernization process, and agrarian economies into industrial ones. Research and empirical studies have all shown that East Asian modernity is both a cultural phenomenon as well as economic/political success. In other words, East Asian modernization process has assumed political/economic/cultural forms different from those identified as characteristically western since the period of the Enlightenment. Please discuss the important political, economic and cultural components in East Asian Modernity. In your discussion, you need to use historical facts from China and Japan to support your arguments.
Here are 6 essay questions, for each question, write a 1 page eassy.