Erik Esselstrom. Crossing Empire's Edge: Foreign Ministry Police and Japanese Expansionism in Northeast Asia.(The World of East Asia.) Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. 2009. Pp. xii, 233. $59.00

The activities of the Japanese Foreign Ministry's consular police are virtually unknown, even to specialists in modern Japanese history. Still less known and expected is the consular police's role in shaping and promoting Japanese colonialism in northeast Asia. Exposing this role is the contribution of Erik Esselstrom's deeply researched history of the consular police from the 1880s to 1945, for it challenges the common view of the Foreign Ministry as a peaceful, liberal internationalist institution opposing aggressive, expansionist military forces, especially during the 1920s and early 1930s.

Esselstrom's history shows how the Japanese Foreign Ministry, through the consular police, actively promoted colonial expansion on the Asian continent. But while arguing that the consular police took proactive and even unilateral action, Esselstrom also reveals that the expansion of the consular police in size and geographical area was a response to...