AustLit

‘Australia and Japan emerged simultaneously as modernizing stages in a shared region, and Singapore joined them in the 1960s. Interaction between Australia and Japan is more than 150 years old, while its Australia/Singapore counterpart is much more recent. But mutual perceptions appear in both cases to be characterized by concerns about cultural superiority or inferiority, and by complex contests over the deference dur to civilizations in Australian, Japanese and Singaporean fiction.’ (p. 37)