Ebook: Britain and Japan in the Twentieth Century: One Hundred Years of Trade and Prejudice

After the horrors of World War II in Asia and the appalling mistreatment of Allied prisoners-of-war by Japanese soldiers during World War II, few would have predicted that Britain’s relationship with Japan would flourish into a booming partnership of economic interdependence by the start of the twenty-first century.   This ambitious examination of Anglo-Japanese relations over the course of the 20th century charts the fascinating history of how both nations overcame many years of prejudice and bitter conflict to form a bond fused by financial, political and military cooperation. In the 1930s, many Japanese became convinced that their exports were being kept out of India by British tariffs and it was not until the 1980s that the British government fully accepted the futility of any protectionist impulse and encouraged Japanese companies to invest in Britain. Today each country not only assists the other economically but also no longer blames the other for its own domestic problems.