City and empire – local identity and regional imperialism in 1930s Japan

The formation of Manchuria in 1932 gave local cities along the Japan Sea coast new hope for development. However, their interpretation of imperialism was in terms of the city rather than the nation. The ways in which these discourses of nation and region played out in ideas of urban development are particularly clear in Kanazawa, the major city on the Japan Sea coast, in the rhetoric surrounding the presentation of empire and region in its exposition that spring.