Robert T. Tierney, "Tropics of Savagery: The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame" (U California Press, 2010)

Beyond the Margins: The University of California Press Podcast · Apr 22, 2021 · 45m

Tropics of Savagery: The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame (U California Press, 2010) is an incisive and provocative study of the figures and tropes of “savagery” in Japanese colonial culture. Through a rigorous analysis of literary works, ethnographic studies, and a variety of other discourses, Robert Thomas Tierney demonstrates how imperial Japan constructed its own identity in relation both to the West and to the people it colonized. By examining the representations of Taiwanese aborigines and indigenous Micronesians in the works of prominent writers, he shows that the trope…