There's nothing like 2 days of the flu to make you appreciate being well again. I don't really remember the last time I was this happy about being able to stand upright. I must now channel this new energy into homework, as none got done while I was sick.

The assignment to be completed first amounts to a book report on Tensions of Empire: Japan and Southeast Asia in the Colonial and Postcolonial World. What strikes me about this text is the ambivalence with which the author treats the Japanese push for empire. He neither buys into the idea of enlightened Japan liberating the people of East Asian from white oppression, nor gives much credence to the cruelty and racial superiority that seems to informed many of Japan's colonial policies. As a matter of fact, reading this book it becomes easy to forget that there was even a war going on in the first place. I've spent a fair amount of time contemplating the modern German psyche and all of the dark paths created by the two world wars, the Holocaust, and then division and reunification, but I've never spent much time on how the Japanese have handled the war and their colonial legacy. In this case I'm led to wonder if the author's perspective is more a result of being brought up in a culture where this aggression has been placed in the past in order to cope. In some sense it's not much different from the way we tend to ignore internment camps and gloss over reservations. I just don't really know what to do with a colonization story that treats the conquerors almost as welcome guests.