“Most discussions of coming to terms with the past have taken the Holocaust as their paradigm. Koga’s important new book looks elsewhere and comes to strikingly original conclusions. Focused on three cities in Northeast China and set in the aftermath of Japanese empire, Inheritance of Loss goes beyond familiar references to the politics of postwar memory and points us toward the political economy of redemption in the wake of colonial modernity. This is a fresh and brilliant intervention that will be of interest to scholars of trauma and memory as well as globalization and postcolonial studies.”

Michael Rothberg, University of California, Los Angeles

“Inheritance of Loss is a moving, powerful, beautifully rendered ethnography that addresses timely questions with surprising answers. China’s market economy has led to the commodification of Japanese imperial remains and the reincorporation of former colonial industries, bringing Japanese tourists and investors alike back to China. Yet this postcolonial encounter through the capitalization of history leads not to an erasure of the past but to painful ironies of reckoning with its memories and traumas. Koga’s engagement with ‘after empire’—what she calls the political economy of redemption—offers a brilliant Benjaminian reading of our times.”

Lisa Rofel, University of California, Santa Cruz