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Winner, 2026 Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize
This book examines the history of the Japanese Red Cross Society (JRCS) and through it offers a new account of the humanitarian movement in modern Japan. Michiko Suzuki argues that contrary to its typical portrayal, the JRCS was not wholly subordinate to the government and the Imperial Family, nor was it derivative of Western values and institutional models. Instead, the JRCS operated within a transnational discourse, both contributing to and borrowing from peacetime and wartime international humanitarianism.
Grounded in extensive research in the JRCS archives and archives outside Japan, this book explores the melding of Western and Japanese humanitarian traditions and organizational forms. Suzuki examines the role of grassroots efforts in the steady growth of the JRCS, showing how the society became Japan’s largest international organization by the First World War, as well as its pioneering role in Red Cross disaster relief. She traces the inclusion of non-Western national societies in the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and the evolution of the JRCS from a national into a transnational organization with branches in Japan’s overseas empire as well as in the Asia Pacific and the Americas. A comprehensive chronicle of the JRCS, Humanitarian Internationalism Under Empire provides a fresh vantage point on major historical questions relating to Japanese modernization and internationalism before the Second World War.
— Sho Konishi, author of Anarchist Modernity: Cooperatism and Japanese-Russian Intellectual Relations in Modern Japan
Based on unique access to the Japan Red Cross Society and extensive archival research on four continents, Humanitarian Internationalism Under Empire transforms our understanding of the Japan Red Cross Society. Suzuki makes a major contribution to the history of humanitarianism in Japan, the transnational history of humanitarian organizations, and Japan's twentieth-century history.
— Sarah Kovner, author of Prisoners of the Empire: Inside Japanese POW Camps
Deftly assembling a rich array of archival materials and challenging the Eurocentric focus of previous studies, Suzuki explains the domestic and international drivers behind the growth of the Japanese Red Cross. Ironically, as Japan’s imperial reach expanded, so too did calls for humanitarian professionalism, and this book unlocks the forces behind why membership continued to rise through war and peace.
— Barak Kushner, author of The Geography of Injustice: East Asia's Battle between Memory and History
This is an important book, one that examines the evolution of the Japanese Red Cross Society using an extensive range of Japanese sources rarely cited in English-language studies. Historian Michiko Suzuki deftly brings to light refreshing new perspectives on the history of the Japanese Red Cross Society, exploring its humanitarian origins and global influences from the late nineteenth century to the atomic devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. A must-read for any humanitarian scholar.
— Melanie Oppenheimer, author of The Power of Humanity: 100 Years of Australian Red Cross
Humanitarian Internationalism Under Empire is a valuable addition to the literature on the humanitarian movement in Japan. It will appeal to a wide audience, from historians of internationalism, transnationalism, and empire to their students in graduate seminars and undergraduate classrooms.
— Mark Lincicome, College of the Holy Cross
Humanitarian International under Empire provides an extensive account of the evolution of the JRCS, making it a significant addition to our understanding of humanitarianism before World War II.
— Donia Hasler, University of Fribourg
Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration and Translation
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Responding to Crises: A People’s Humanitarian Movement
2. Internationalism in Crisis: The Fifteenth International Conference of the Red Cross in Tokyo, 1934
3. Transnational Humanitarian Movement: The Japanese Red Cross Society Overseas
4. Beyond Empire: The Japanese Red Cross Society in Hawai'i and Brazil
5. The Japanese Red Cross Society and World War II: Civilian Casualties, Internees, and Prisoners of War
6. Nuclear Emergency: Japanese Red Cross Society Nurses’ in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, August 1945
Conclusion
Appendix 1. Resolutions of the XVth International Red Cross Conference
Appendix 2. Draft International Convention on the Condition and Protection of Civilians, Tokyo, 1934
Note on Sources
Notes
Bibliography
Index