Conclusion

The conclusion summarizes the main points and significance of the book, and carries the narrative forward into the postwar era with a brief epilogue. Spatial politics were central to the history of Japanese imperialism. As empire transitioned from a project of territorial maintenance to one of territorial maintenance in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, concepts and representation of place formed the foundation for an imperial social imaginary that integrated colonized lands and peoples into the space of the Japanese nation, and came to structure new forms of colonial difference as anti-imperial nationalism and anti-colonial liberalism challenged the core-periphery structure of empire after World War I. The epilogue shows how tourism and geography education reshaped the socio-spatial imaginary of the Japanese nation from the U.S. Occupation to the early postwar era, and how travelers struggled to re-remember their experiences of travel and encounter in Taiwan, Manchuria, and Korea.