The Dominion and the Rising Sun is the first major study of Canada’s diplomatic arrival in Japan and, by extension, East Asia. It examines the political, economic, and cultural relations forged during this seminal period between the foremost power in Asia and the young dominion tentatively establishing itself in world affairs.

The book begins with the opening in 1929 of the Canadian legation in Tokyo -- Canada’s third such office overseas -- and concludes with the outbreak of hostilities in 1941. Primarily a diplomatic history, the book also assesses the impact of traders, interest groups, and missionaries on Canadian attitudes toward Japan during the interwar years. More fundamentally, it examines Canada’s diplomatic coming of age closely, revealing its important Pacific dimension and the tension between Canada’s commitment to peace and its trade with an aggressor.

John D. Meehan's profile page

John D. Meehan is Assistant Professor of History, Campion College, University of Regina.

With its seamless prose and array of interesting details, John Meehan’s The Dominion of the Rising Sun is an accessible piece of scholarship on a previously neglected story within Canadian diplomatic history, Canada’s official relations with Japan from 1929 to 1941.

University of Toronto Quarterly, Vol. 76, No. 1

A well-written and well-researched book, The Dominion and the Rising Sun will be, for many years, the starting point of future studies on Canada-Japan and Canada-East Asia research.

Histoire Sociale/Social History, Vol. XXXIX, No. 77

Meehan has given us an important book that will serve as a benchmark for future historical research related to Canada-Japan relations…The book reminds us of long-forgotten details of Canadian foreign policy…[and] Meehan rightly upbraids traditionalists for the ‘Eurocentric focus of studies of Canada’s inter-war foreign policy.'

International History Review, XXVIII, 3