"[Ward] has provided his readers with a well-written account of how between 1920 and the 1930s the Japanese nation endeavored to suppress political radicalism." — Augustine Adu Frimpong, African and Asian Studies
"Thought Crime offers a lucid reflection on theories of power and the modern state while refusing to fetishize the particularities of the Japanese case." — David Ambaras, Journal of Interdisciplinary History
"Thought Crime sets itself apart from past studies of the Peace Preservation Law by developing a theory of imperial ideology that focuses on its effects on those in proximity to it: bureaucrats, thought criminals, and those who were mobilized to rehabilitate them." — John Person, Journal of Asian Studies
“Theoretically rigorous and reinvigorating . . . a necessary intervention in reasserting the importance of state power, elucidating the fascist logic of the emperor system”
— Catherine Tsai, Journal of Asian Humanities
“No one in English or Japanese has written on the Peace Preservation Law with the conceptual sophistication that Max M. Ward brings to the topic. He deftly considers Japan's national body politic and the phenomenon of ideological conversion in their imbrications with the problems of sovereignty, the monarchy, colonialism, and national territory like nobody else. Thought Crime will be required reading for scholars and students of modern Japanese history.” — Takashi Fujitani, author of Race for Empire: Koreans as Japanese and Japanese as Americans during World War II
“Max M. Ward's illuminating new book examines the dynamics of left-right political conversions—tenko—during the era of Japanese fascism. Moving beyond the conventional focus on the individual as the site for moral responsibility and political repression, Ward directs our attention to the operations and logic of the imperial state. By examining the nexus of political ideology, state form, and security apparatus, Ward reenergizes debates about Japan's ‘emperor-system’ and injects new life into the practice of political history more broadly. A must read for scholars of interwar and wartime Japan.” — Louise Young, author of Beyond the Metropolis: Second Cities and Modern Life in Interwar Japan