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  • Under the Shadow of the Rising Sun: Japan and the Jews during the Holocaust Era by Meron Medzini
  • Thomas Pekar
Under the Shadow of the Rising Sun: Japan and the Jews during the Holocaust Era, Meron Medzini ( Brighton, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2016), XII + 220 pp., hardcover $79.00.

Meron Medzini focuses on Japan's attitude and policies towards Jews during the National Socialist era, an especially important topic given that approximately 20,000 Jews fled Europe and survived the Holocaust in areas of Asia controlled by Japan: most notably in Shanghai, but also in other occupied territories, and even in Japan itself. While the book focuses on the years 1933–1945, a prologue provides background about relations between Jews and Japan prior to 1933, and an epilogue describes developments between 1945 and 2015, a period the author presents in a positive light, characterized by increasing Holocaust awareness in Japan and good relations with Israel.

Medzini begins with the gradual opening of Japan to the rest of the world in the second half of the nineteenth century, when Jewish traders first arrived in Japan along with other Western merchants. Around the beginning of the twentieth century, they started to build synagogues in port cities such as Nagasaki, Yokohama, and Kobe. In this same period, the Japanese made their first acquaintances with Russian Jews: soldiers captured during the Russo-Japanese War in 1904–1905. After the end of the 1905 Revolution, and later after the outbreak of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, some Russian Jews fled to Japan and to Chinese cities such as Harbin and Shanghai, which later came under Japanese occupation.

The number of Jews in Japan remained quite small, and most of the population was not aware of them as a separate group. Nevertheless, this did not prevent the emergence of antisemitic thought. In 1918, Japanese troops landed in Vladivostok alongside British and American troops with the aim of quashing the Bolshevik Revolution, remaining in Siberia until 1922. Here they met anti-revolutionary units whose officers believed that the Revolution was part of the global Jewish conspiracy described in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In Japan, the Protocols fell on fertile ground. In the 1920s it was translated several times, and a group of so-called "Jew specialists" emerged, some of whom advanced to government circles and later influenced Japanese policies towards the Jews during the Pacific War. The idea of a "Jewish Peril" and the phrase "Jewish Question" also caught on in Japan.

When the Japanese occupied the Chinese region of Manchuria in 1931 and set up the puppet regime of Manchukuo in 1932, the 25,000 Russian Jews who had settled there after 1917 came under Japanese rule. Japan made an attempt to establish good relations with them and even set up an umbrella organization, the Far Eastern Jewish Council, in partnership with Abraham Kaufmann (1885–1971), head of the Jewish community in Harbin. This council organized congresses in 1937 and 1939, which Japan publicized in its efforts to portray the country in a positive light. They hoped to influence Jews in the U.S. because the Japanese government was convinced of their strong political and economic influence. Good relations with the Japanese protected the Jews in Manchukuo from persecution. The Japanese authorities even enabled thousands of European Jews to reach Shanghai by issuing them transit visas through Manchukuo. But the Tripartite Pact in 1940 committed Japan strongly to Nazi Germany, marking the end of open cooperation with the Far Eastern Jewish Council; however, the Jews in Manchukuo did not suffer any kind of persecution or discrimination.

Japan essentially attempted to maintain good relations with Nazi Germany while at the same time not discriminating against Jews, at least until war with the U.S. began after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. The change in Japan's policy towards the Jews was especially significant for the [End Page 312] 20,000 European Jewish refugees living in Shanghai (including some 14,000 German and 3,000 Austrian Jews). Due to its special political status as a partially International Settlement, Shanghai had become a center of exile after Adolf Hitler's ascent to power...

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