Sheila Miyoshi Jager. The other great game: the opening of Korea and the birth of modern East Asia.

    A paean to Japanese militarism. What Sheila Miyoshi Jager calls "the opening of Korea" is the annexation and the brutal occupation by the Japanese. Chinese and Koreans are barely considered as people; only as objects of the Japanese policy. Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese war (1904-1905), which acquired Japan a half of Sakhalin island from Russia but also got Japan a free hand in its robbery of Chinese Manchuria and Korea at the cost of several hundred thousand casualties and reign of terror over subjugated populations is celebrated as a great triumph of its foreign policy. United States, the friendship of which is upheld by Sheila Miyoshi as a cornerstone of its victory and achievement, in fact wrestled from the Japanese the fruits of its victory over Russia at the end in the Peace of Portsmouth. Yet, it led Japan into a swirl of militaristic expansion, which ended with the wars with the USSR and the USA and its ultimate defeat.