Book excerpt: In "Facing Japan", Parks M. Coble focuses on how events that took place during the Japanese occupation of Manchuria - from 1931 until war erupted in 1937 - affected the Chinese goverment and public opinion. Both in the places where incidents occurred and in other centres of power, Japanese threats, attacks, and economic demands pressed Nationalist China relentlessly and aroused popular indignation. Throughout most of the period, Chiang kai-Shek was trying to wrest control of China from all domestic rivals. Aware that his army was inferior to Japan's, his Nationalist government repeatedly made concessions in response to Japanese provocations. Chiang busied himself with anti-Communist campaigns, leaving others to take public responsibility for his unpopular appeasement policies. For such crises as the Mukden Incident and the Japanese attack on Shanghai, Coble examines the tension that Chiang's policy caused within the Kuomintang, and the alternatives put forward by other major leaders both inside and outside the government. To further explore the political complexities of the day, Coble traces the actions of regional leaders and their constantly changing relations to the central government in Nanking, reviews editorials of various newspapers, and chronicles the actions of student organizations and patriotic associations.