ABSTRACT
Japan welcomed Western modernization beginning with the Meiji period (18681912). But their afrmative attitude went through changes after the Second World War because of the trauma of the atomic bombs and the subsequent Allied occupation. Meanwhile, China’s experience with the West since the 1800s see-sawed between struggles against colonial aggression and an admiration of Western knowledge, technology, and certain of its liberating humanist ideas, as in the 1919 May Fourth Movement. Korea and Taiwan share commonalities with China: Western technology was welcomed, but colonial domination was resented. In Hong Kong, a century of British colonial rule resulted in a strong sense of ambivalence and alienation,3 which could not be erased even after Hong Kong was re-annexed by China in 1997. Consequently, East Asian modernism emerged in a non-uniform manner, with variations arising sometimes due to local needs, sometimes to political or economic convenience.
