America's Geisha Ally: Reimagining the Japanese Enemy by Naoko ShibusawaReview by: Lucian W. PyeForeign Affairs, Vol. 86, No. 2 (Mar. - Apr., 2007), pp. 181-182Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20032334 .

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Recent Books

examines almost month by month the developments that brought different leaders to center stage-where they in variably proved to be failures.

Reins ofLiberation:An EntangledHistory ofMongolian Independence, Chinese Territorality, and Great Power Hegemony, 1911-1950. BY XIAOYUAN

LIU. Stanford University Press, 2006, So6 pp. $6S.oo.

The story of Mongolia, both Inner and Outer, has not received the attention that it probably deserves. As Liu demon strates in great detail, it is a story that involves the geopolitical maneuverings

of China, Russia, and Japan; struggles for independence and for domination over others; and the complex political and social changes that go along with transitions from traditional empires to

modern nation-states. The idea of a sovereign Mongolia had complex reper cussions for the Chinese, who wanted to claim some of the greatness associated

with the historic Mongol conquests but also championed ethnic and racial identities

when it came to Han chauvinism and assumed that the Mongolians should accept the leadership of the Han ethnic

majority. The story became even more complex when the Russians introduced Bolshevism as a basis, considered superior to both ethnicity and territoriality, for drawing political boundaries.

Chinese Politics in the HuJintao Era: New Leaders, New Challenges. BY WILLY

WO-LAP LAM. M.E. Sharpe, 2006,

376 pp. $82.95 (paper, $29.95). Lam, a journalist based in Hong Kong, has had a remarkable career reporting on Chinese developments. He established

excellent sources for following the Mao and Deng generations of Chinese leaders, and now he shows that he has exceptionally good sources for understanding develop ments among the "fourth generation" of Chinese Communist leaders. Hu Jintao does not have the dramatic leadership qualities of Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, or even Jiang Zemin, the "third generation" leader. Hu made his way to the top by quietly doing his duties and not creating enemies. He also demonstrated leadership skills while serving as Beijing's man in

Tibet, at a time when there were serious riots, and as head of the Communist

Youth League. Lam describes how Hu overcame his disadvantages and developed into a competent national leader who understands the importance of ideology, slogans, pragmatic policies, and eco nomic reforms in a communist system. He suggests that Hu has the skills and the personality to keep China a communist state even as it progresses economically.

Americas GeishaAl/y: Reimagining the Japanese Enemy. BY NAOKO SHIBUSAWA. Harvard University

Press, 2006, 408 pp. $3s.00. This is a bold book in which the author quite openly discusses the racial and gender prejudices of Americans toward the Japanese during World War II and the early Cold War. Americans recog nized that there were "good" and "bad" Germans-the latter limited largely to the Nazis themselves-but the Japanese

were more generally demonized with blatantly racist terminology. Even liberal scholars joined in the attacks on the Japan ese by discussing the Japanese "national character" in quite negative terms. During the occupation, the U.S. military depicted

FOREIGN AFFAIRS March/April2007 [181]

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Recent Books

the Japanese as immature people who needed instruction in many dimensions of modern life. Even with the advent of the Cold War, the treacherous, myopic, bucktoothed "Jap" continued to appear in American popular culture. Shibusawa makes the telling point that Americans eventually had to change their views of the Japanese in part because of feelings of guilt about dropping atomic bombs on two defenseless Japanese cities. American GIS also helped change the image of the Japanese, especially as many married Japanese women. Yet a degree of ambiva lence lingered on, and there was some uncertainty as to what role Japan could best play in the emerging international system. This is a significant study that combines analysis of popular culture with judgments about international relations.

Africa NICOLAS VAN DE WALLE

Mandela.A CriticalLife. BY TOM LODGE. Oxford University Press, 2006, 304 pp. $26.oo.

Lodge, a well-regarded longtime observer of South African politics, has written a splendid biography of South Africa's first democratic president. Nelson Mandela's life has been too well documented, not least in his own comprehensive autobiog raphy, for Lodge's consistently readable account to reveal many previously unknown anecdotes. Instead of trying to unearth new details, Lodge focuses on Mandela's roots and education in order to explain his subsequent approach to politics as leader of the African National Congress. Lodge points to a youth in the Thembu aristocracy

in Transkei, an Anglophile education in Methodist schools, and training as a

lawyer to explain Mandela's sense of personal destiny, attachment to British style democratic institutions, and ability to bridge his country's political divides.

He shows how a combination of self conscious charisma, graceful manners, and a deeply ingrained sense of political tolerance proved key to his effectiveness as a leader of the transition. Mandela's personal assets of a mythical stature within the ANC and the grudging respect of even the most intractable Afrikaner conserv atives were based on skills and attitudes cultivated from childhood. Lodge avoids hagiography, notably in a final chapter that offers a measured and not uncritical assessment of Mandela's presidency,

while making a compelling case for the man's historical importance.

A Culture of Corruption: Everyday Deception and Popular Discontent in Nigeria. BY DANIEL JORDAN SMITH. Princeton

University Press, 2006, 289 pp. $27.95. At the center of this anthropological account of the pervasiveness of corruption at all levels of society and politics in Nige ria is the so-called 419 scam, in which

Nigerians prey on the greed and gullibility of Westerners with endless variations of the classic confidence game. Using his experiences from over a decade of living and working in Nigeria, Smith shows how forms of corruption have seeped into every facet of everyday life in a country of astounding inequality and poverty in spite of, or perhaps because of, its great oil wealth. Smith argues that corrupt acts are often culturally acceptable if they benefit family and kin, not least because Nigerians believe that pervasive corruption

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