Japan in War and Peace: Selected Essays - Softcover

Dower, John W.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1565842790 ISBN 13: 9781565842793

Publisher: The New Press, 1995

Synopsis

Drawing on decades of experience and research, John W. Dower, author of the award-winning War Without Mercy, highlights for the first time the resemblances between wartime, postwar, and contemporary Japan. He argues persuasively that the origins of many of the institutions responsible for Japan's dominant position in today’s global economy derive from the rapid military industrialization of the 1930s, and not from the post-occupation period, as many have assumed. A brilliant lead essay, “The Useful War,” sets the tone for the volume by incisively showing how much of Japan’s postwar political and economic structure was prefigured in the wartime organization of that country.

About this title

About the Author:

John W. Dower is a professor of history, emeritus, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He co-founded MIT’s online “Visualizing Cultures” project, which uses visual materials to reexamine the experience of Japan and China in the modern world. Dower is the author of Japan in War and Peace: Selected Essays, and Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering: Japan in the Modern World, both published by The New Press. He is also the author of the National Book Award finalist Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor / Hiroshima / 9-11 / Iraq and of Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, which was the recipient of numerous honors, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Bancroft Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History, and the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Prize; both books were co-published by The New Press and W.W. Norton & Company. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Here, Dower (War Without Mercy, 1986, etc.) offers a collection of essays on Japan and its complex relations with the US over the past half century--a period that roughly corresponds to the reign of Emperor Hirohito. While most of the pieces have been previously published in academic journals, they afford accessible perspectives that go provocatively against the grain of received wisdom on a nation whose economic accomplishments have set the West scrambling for explanations--and scapegoats. Drawing on a host of nontraditional sources (cartoons, movies, rumors, subversive graffiti, and other aspects of popular culture or public opinion), Dower offers a decidedly contrarian appraisal of the Asian powerhouse. He sets the tone in his lead piece, ``The Useful War,'' which makes a persuasive case that the estimable enterprise and productivity of Japan's business establishment dates back to the early stages of WW II, when the military was in charge, and not to the postwar era, during which Allied occupation forces introduced democratic reforms. Nor does the author put much stock in either community or consensus theory: From the 1931 Manchurian Incident through the height of WW II and beyond, he shows that potential revolutionary dissent, tension, and turmoil have been hallmarks of Japan's putatively harmonious society. Covered as well are grassroots perceptions of the atomic bomb; the desultory efforts of Japan's armed services to develop nuclear weapons prior to V-J Day; the policies of ex-P.M. Shigeru Toshida (who made subordinate independence a keystone of his country's foreign policy); and the role that racial antagonisms still play when Tokyo and Washington seek to do business with one another. Challenging views of a land whose industrial and sociopolitical institutions may well defy conventional analysis. (Profusely illustrated throughout with line drawings, stills from propaganda films, political cartoons, and posters, as well as a wealth of tabular material) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: The New Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 1565842790
• ISBN 13: 9781565842793
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384