These essays, by thirteen specialist from Japan and the United Sates, provide a comprehensive view of the Japanese empire from its establishment in 1895 to its liquidation in 1945. They offer a variety of perspective on subjects previously neglected by historians: the origin and evolution of formal empire (which comprised Taiwan, Korea, Karafuto the Kwantung Leased Territory, and the South Seas Mandated Islands), the institutions and policies by which it was governed and the economic dynamics that impelled it. Seeking neither to justify the empire nor to condemm it, the contributors place it in the framework of Japanese history and the context of colonialism as a global phenomenon.