Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan eBook: Ian Buruma: Books

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Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and JapanKindle Edition
by Ian Buruma (Author)


4.4 out of 5 stars 16 customer reviews




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In this highly original and now classic text, Ian Buruma explores and compares how Germany and Japan have attempted to come to terms with their violent pasts, and investigates the painful realities of living with guilt, and with its denial.

As Buruma travels through both countries, he encounters people whose honesty in confronting their past is strikingly brave, and others who astonish by the ingenuity of their evasions of responsibility. In Auschwitz, Berlin, Hiroshima and Tokyo he explores the contradictory attitudes of scholars, politicians and survivors towards World War II and visits the contrasting monuments that commemorate the atrocities of the war.

Buruma allows these opposing voices to reveal how an obsession with the past, especially distorted versions of it, continually causes us to question who should indeed pay the wages of guilt.

Length: 336 pages Word Wise: Enabled Enhanced Typesetting:Enabled
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File Size: 1315 KB
Print Length: 336 pages

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Buruma examines how Germany and Japan have separately dealt with the guilt they bear for acts committed during WWII.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Buruma, a native of Holland, established his credentials on the subject of Japan in Behind the Mask (1983). In this work, he examines how Japan and Germany have handled their collective memories of World War II. While Gordon Craig (The Germans, LJ 2/1/82) examined the ethnopsychology of the Germans with more scholarship, Buruma provides a timely comparative study of the Axis partners. Given the current fear of a reunified Germany full of skinheads in the streets, Buruma may surprise some with his conclusion that Germany is coming to grips with the past while Japan tries to ignore it. As a journalist, Buruma is prone to journalism's sins: sweeping generalizations and the absence of footnotes. Still, this insightful look at two major nations in the new world order will make a valuable addition to any library. Highly recommended.
--Randall L. Schroeder, Augustana Coll. Lib., Rock Island, Ill.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Biography
Ian Buruma was educated in Holland and Japan. He has spent many years in Asia, which he has written about in God's Dust, A Japanese Mirror, and Behind the Mask. He has also written Playing the Game, The Wages of Guilt, and Anglomania. Buruma is currently a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Institute for the Humanities in Washington, DC.


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Top Reviews

Grace Fortiter
4.0 out of 5 starsHow Japanese and Germans Interpret WW2 TodayJanuary 4, 2017
Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase
Comparing the attitudes of Japanese and Germans toward World War II, in retrospect. Burma, well known as a writer for the NY Review of Books and other intellectual publications, is somewhat speculative here, and the writing is not first-rate, but his interpretations are provocative. To me, he makes an especially illuminating distinction between how West Germans and Germans in the East DDR dealt with "German guilt" -- the Ossies felt less German than communist, he thinks -- the Soviets were anti-fascist from the start so the mythos was that DDR was cleaner than the West -- which opened yet another schism to paper over when reunification occurred after 1989. He also reflects that the Japanese are far less soul-searching about their wartime role and motives, indeed a retrospective glow has fueled Japanese nationalism and militarism in recent decades, the idea being that Japan was seeking an anti-colonial union of Asia (never mind atrocities of Nanking et al.)

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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 starsVery insightfulJanuary 26, 2016
Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase
Great book!

As someone with a graduate degree in Global and International Studies, who has spent much of the last 10 years traveling/working/researching in over 60 countries, even I was really quite shocked talking to many Japanese during a recent several month trip there about their historical memory of World War 2. The general denial of wrongdoing, the semi-glorification of imperial militarism, the often bitter racism towards former imperial subjects such as Koreans, Chinese, and Filipinos, and the common ignorance of history was all deeply unsettling. This book skillfully provides the background to this situation and gives context for how this came to be. It mostly dismisses explanations that focus on religious/cultural differences (which always bothered me as they often seemed to reek of orientalism and racism) for why different axis powers have faced up to their pasts in such different ways and looks at how politics have shaped remembrance. Although I don't agree with all his points and was a bit bothered by sections of the concluding chapter, I have to admit that this was overall insightful and well written.

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Loretta Francesco
5.0 out of 5 starsAn up-close and in-depth study of the differences in post-World War II Japan and Germany. An excellent book.February 16, 2016
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This is a brilliant study of the different way in which Japan and Germany have dealt and are dealing with the memories of the atrocities committed by their countries during WWII. It's an in-depth study of the nature of and reasons for the current pacifism of the two countries, comparing politics, culture, history, etc. It is also in it's own way a page turner.


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wise shopper MN
5.0 out of 5 starsA very special book with excelent insights on post WWII behavior of two defeated countries.July 22, 2015
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i am sooo glad that this very important book is still in circulation and Amazon once again is able to deliver it. Thanks. Should be a required reading for all senior high school students in social studies and world history 101 of college freshmen/women.


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arlette brisson
5.0 out of 5 starsthis is the best account of that era that i have ever readApril 30, 2016
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this is the best account of that era that i have ever read. I was born in belgium in 1938 and moved to england until 1945.All these years I have kept a vivid memory of the after war years. I am a huge fan of Ian Buruma and have read most of his writing!!!arlette brisson


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Amazon Customer
4.0 out of 5 starsFour StarsJanuary 12, 2016
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Interesting read contrasting Japanese and German responses to the war.

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David Ljunggren
4.0 out of 5 starsExcellent study of how Germany and Japan dealt with war guiltFebruary 13, 2012
Format: Paperback
Ian Buruma travels to Germany and Japan to see how they are dealing with their guilt over what happened in World War Two. In this well-paced and well-researched work, he shows how West and East Germany at least tried hard in their own ways to to explain to their populations what had happened. The Japanese chose to gloss over the atrocities and in this work at least, come off as highly unimpressive and ambiguous. Buruma makes the point that part of the problem was the U.S. decision to let the emperor stay in power and to forbid criticism of him. So the man the troops dedicated their battles to all through the war stayed on the throne, which made it difficult to persuade the nation that it should be guilty about its past. The only reason I give this four stars is because the author jumps back and forth too often and the result is chapters that are sometimes very fragmented.

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bibliomane01
5.0 out of 5 starsDealing with the PastAugust 9, 2001
Format: Hardcover
Ian Buruma takes a look at the various ways in which the people of Germany and Japan have dealt with the legacy of the atrocities committed by their countries during World War II. His book was especially timely in the case of Germany because he began writing it shortly after the unification of the Federal Republic and the GDR, when discussion of Germany's past was widespread both at home and abroad. Buruma is also well qualified to comment on Japan because he lived there for many years and speaks the language.
To summarise, the "The Wages of Guilt" finds that the German people, at least in the western part, have been more ready to come to terms with their war legacy than the Japanese. There are Nazi sympathizers and Holacaust deniers aplenty in Germany, but they seem to be confined to the fringes. In Japan, however, rightist elements remain powerful and the official line is to portray the war as an economically driven power struggle in which any excesses committed by the armed forces occurred in the heat of battle, thus denying any similarity to the behaviour of the Nazis. Moreover, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are viewed as atrocities on par with any act committed by the Axis powers; racism and a perverted scientific curiosity are among the motives attributed to America in its decisions to drop the bombs. Buruma explores the efforts to re-examine the war through the prism of German and Japanese reactions to Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Nanking, the war crimes trials, etc. and the result is a troubling and thought provoking meditation on the power of history and the psychology of escape. Check this one out, it's worth a look.

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