Returning to the motif that underscored his widely influential Japan as Number One: Lessons for America,1 Ezra F. Vogel centers this sweeping survey of more than 1,500 years of Sino-Japanese interactions around the key theme of “learning.” Having seen his previous books on the Japanese economic miracle and Deng Xiaoping become bestsellers in East Asia, Vogel acknowledges at the outset that he is writing “as a bystander who can potentially reach audiences in both countries” (p. viii). While this imagined audience is most definitely a general reader, Vogel—building on specialized studies of Sino-Japanese relations by scholars such as Joshua Fogel, Zhenping Wang, Paula Harrell (who coauthored one of the chapters), Douglas Reynolds, Lu Yan, and Amy King—nevertheless creates a rich synthesis that in its ambitious scope and detail has much to offer to students and scholars of modern China, Japan, and East Asia.
Vogel places emphasis on three...
