Treatment of international relations in wartime Japanese ethics textbooks

What is it about?

An examination of lessons dealing with international relations in wartime Japanese ethics textbooks shows that scholars used the idea of "international morality" to reconcile the principle of internationalism with the realities of imperialism and war in the 1930s.

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Why is it important?

This article contributes to recent trends in scholarship on Japan's international history by bringing in cultural materials to the study of diplomacy and by linking international affairs to domestic circumstances. It shows how textbook authors and other educators contributed to a redefinition of internationalism that enabled its persistence through a period of imperialism and war