An NBCC award winner and expert in the modern history of Japan,
Dower (Massachusetts Inst. of Technology; Japan in War and Peace,
1994; War Without Mercy, 1986) absorbingly explains how American
forces imposed a revolution from above in six years of occupation
that transformed imperial Japan into a democracy. As WWII ended,
Japan had lost three million dead, with many more wounded,
starving, homeless, and demoralized. Dower has drawn effectively on
Japanese academic, archival, and popular sources to capture the
atmosphere of flux and uncertainty that followed surrender,
including suicidal despair, gratitude toward generous GIs,
black-market entrepreneurship, prostitution, and the unleashing of
creative energy. The most important change, of course, occurred in
politics. In a root-and-branch attempt to destroy Japan's
militaristic culture, the Americans created a constitution that
limited the emperor to a symbolic head of state, renounced war as
an instrument of settling international disputes, and established
such reforms as sexual equality, greater freedom of speech and
press, an end to the Shinto state religion, and a free labor
movement. Written in six days, the constitution set the stage for
Unprecedented Japanese freedom, equality, and prosperity. For all
their idealism, however, the American forces also acted with little
knowledge of Japanese history, censored criticism of the
occupation, and treated the losers with condescension. In the Far
East counterpart to the Nuremberg trials, American prosecutors
excluded testimony about Emperor Hirohito's responsibility for war
crimes and fed the nation's sense of its victimization without
forcing a realization of its culpability for atrocities committed
against other Asians. In the greatest irony, by promoting such
bureaucratic structures as the Ministry of Trade and Industry,
MacArthur merely replaced his own mandarinate with a Japanese
version. A turning point in Japanese history, illuminated through
diligent research and piercing insight. (Kirkus Reviews)
For the Japanese, the Second World War only ended in 1952, when sovereignty was restored after the long American occupation. Despite a declared policy of 'demilitarization and democratization', General MacArthur ruled like a colonial overlord, relied on the disgraced Emperor Hirohito and the mandarin class, and soon began rearming a former enemy turned Cold War ally. John Dower explores the variety of responses to military disaster; the complex interplay between victor and vanquished; the behaviour of prostitutes, publishers, profiteers and politicians; and the first signs of the economic miracle to come. The result is a definitive account, enabling Westerners for the first time 'to grasp the defeat and occupation as a lived Japanese experience'.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
