When Emperor Hirohito announced defeat in a radio broadcast on 15th August 1945, Japan was not merely a nation; it was a colossal empire stretching from the tip of Alaska to the fringes of Australia grown out of a colonial ideology that continued to pervade East Asian society for years after the end of the Second World War. In Overcoming Empire in Post-Imperial East Asia: Repatriation, Redress and Rebuilding, Barak Kushner and Sherzod Muminov bring together an international team of leading scholars to explore the post-imperial history of the region. From international aid to postwar cinema to chemical warfare, these essays all focus on the aftermath of Japan's aggressive warfare and the new international strategies which Japan, China, Taiwan, North and South Korea utilised following the end of the war and the collapse of Japan's empire. The result is a nuanced analysis of the transformation of postwar national identities, colonial politics, and the reordering of society in East Asia. With its innovative comparative and transnational perspective, this book is essential reading for scholars of modern East Asian history, the cold war, and the history of decolonisation. People in former Japanese colonies had little control over their futures, struggling for power, legitimacy, and compensation. The story of how people overcame the legacies of empire to rebuild their lives provides us with an alternative chronology for the 20th century and this exciting volume shows how the decade following Japan's empire helped shaped the history of our own time.