Embracing Defeat
 First edition cover | |
| Author | John W. Dower |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | History |
| Publisher | W.W. Norton & Co. |
Publication date | 1999 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 676 |
| ISBN | 978-0-393-32027-5 |
| Preceded by | The Bombed: Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japanese Memory, Diplomatic History 19, no. 2 |
| Followed by | Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, 9-11, Iraq |
Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II is a history book written by John W. Dower and published by W. W. Norton & Company in 1999.[1] The book covers the difficult social, economic, cultural and political situation of Japan in the aftermath of World War II and the nation's occupation by the Allies between August 1945 and April 1952, delving into topics such as the administration of Douglas MacArthur, the Tokyo war crimes trials, Hirohito's controversial Humanity Declaration and the drafting of the new Constitution of Japan.
Described by The New York Times as "magisterial and beautifully written," the book won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction, the 1999 National Book Award, the 2000 Bancroft Prize, the 2000 L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award, the Mark Lynton History Prize and the 1999 Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
Described by The New York Times as "magisterial and beautifully written,"[2] the book won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction,[3] the 1999 National Book Award,[4] the 2000 Bancroft Prize,[5] the 2000 L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award, the Mark Lynton History Prize and the 1999 Los Angeles Times Book Prize.[6]
Steven Tolliday sees the book as a rare example of a book that shows the post-war years from a Japanese perspective, and writes that it is a "massively researched and beautifully illustrated book".[7] Dower's writing is called "elegant, informative and easy to follow". Martyn Smith considers it to be "an outstanding account of US-Japan relations in the aftermath of the war and a useful guide to understanding the trans-national nature of Japan’s rise to economic superpower".[8]
Michael Schaller noted that Dower "uses not only a rich array of period photographs but also art, comic books, poetry, letters, and journals from the 1940s to examine how the Japanese coped with hunger, homelessness, and despair in the wake of surrender. In the process, Dower delves into the technical and human dimensions of the black market, prostitution, the treatment of demobilized soldiers, the blossoming of literature despite a rigid and often mindless censorship that barred virtually any discussion of the nuclear bombs' impact, and the evolution of language to accommodate Japan's radically altered circumstances."[9] J. A. A. Stockwin in his review for The New York Times calls it a "richly nuanced book" and writes that "Dower adopts a critical view of the occupation, but, interestingly, he is plainly enamored of the sheer democratic panache of that Constitution and of the largely -- though not wholly -- successful efforts of Government Section bureaucrats to prevent the Japanese Government from subtly undermining its key provisions".[2]
- Dower, John W (1999). Embracing defeat: Japan in the wake of World War II (2003 ed.). W.W. Norton & Co. ISBN 978-0-393-32027-5. Total pages: 676.
- ^ Dower, John W. (1999). Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 676 pages. ISBN 0-393-04686-9.
Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II.
- ^ a b "This Space Occupied". The New York Times. 1999-07-04.
- ^ "Pulitzer Prize Winners: General Non-Fiction" (web). pulitzer.org. Retrieved 2008-03-13.
- ^ "National Book Awards – 1999" (web). National Book Foundation. 2012. Retrieved 2012-02-20. (With acceptance speech.)
- ^ "The Bancroft Prizes; Previous Awards". Columbia University Libraries. Archived from the original (web) on 2007-07-14. Retrieved 2008-03-13.
- ^ "1999 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winners". Los Angeles Times. 2007. Archived from the original (web) on 2002-06-04. Retrieved 2008-03-13.
- ^ Tolliday, Steven. "Embracing Defeat. Japan in the Wake of World War Two | Reviews in History". reviews.history.ac.uk. Retrieved 29 May 2024.
- ^ Smith, Martyn. "Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Aftermath of World War II | Reviews in History". reviews.history.ac.uk. Retrieved 29 May 2024.
- ^ Schaller, Michael (2000). "Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (review)". Journal of Cold War Studies. pp. 108–109. Retrieved 29 May 2024.
- Embracing Defeat at Open Library
- First Chapter
- Interview with Dower on Embracing Defeat, Booknotes, March 26, 2000
.png){kind=small}
Displaying 1 - 10 of 403 reviews
Profile Image for Matt.
Matt
980 reviews
29.4k followers
Follow
February 1, 2020
“Such an audacious undertaking by victors in war had no legal or historical precedent. With a minimum of rumination about the legality or propriety of such an undertaking, the Americans set about doing what no other occupation force had done before: remaking the political, social, cultural, and economic fabric of a defeated nation, and in the process changing the very way of thinking of its populace…”
- John Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II
While I have ready plenty of books about the Second World War’s Pacific Theater, I will be the first to admit that my studies have – for the most part – ended with the twin atomic blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After that, a gap appears in my knowledge, a gap that doesn’t really end until the Korean War picks up in 1950.
Now, I’m not entirely ignorant. It’s just that my understanding is made up of bits and pieces, of half-comprehended fragments. Obviously, I know that Japan was occupied by the United States. I also know that the occupation was dominated by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), Douglas MacArthur, playing the role for which he was born (to wit: God). This thin grasp has left me with the impression that the occupation was a net positive, bringing Japan back into the family of nations after embarking on a series of murderous endeavors beginning as far back as 1931. When we think of Japan today, the ghosts of Nanking are mostly absent, having been replaced by Japan’s status as a place of peace, of technological innovation, and of economic robustness.
When I went looking for a book to provide a fuller, more complete story, I did not have to search long or hard. John Dower’s Embracing Defeat is the history on postwar Japan. Dower is a noted historian of the Pacific War, and Embracing Defeat is his opus. Published in 1999, it cleaned up on the literary awards circuit, winning both the Pulitzer and the National Book Award. At 576 pages of text (and 83 pages of annotated endnotes), it strives for comprehensiveness. The ambition is admirable, but ultimately self-defeating. Embracing Defeat is a very good volume that – to paraphrase Bilbo in The Fellowship of the Ring – gets stretched, “like butter scraped over too much bread.”
In structuring this tale, the most obvious thing Dower could have done was sort the material chronologically, resting the narrative on the shoulders of the larger-than-life MacArthur. This would not have made for an uninteresting book. MacArthur, to quote one of his biographers, “was a thundering paradox of a man,” as endlessly fascinating as any other historical figure who ever lived. More than that, many of his impulses as SCAP were correct (even if Dower might disagree), and he left Japan as a hero to many.
But Dower is not interested in making this MacArthur’s story (or rather, another in a long line of MacArthur stories). To his credit, he aims to write from the perspective of the Japanese. His goal – as impossible as it sounds – is to distill a traumatic national experience. Dower tries to imagine what it felt like to go from being the ascendant conqueror to being utterly vanquished. He attempts to describe what it was like to have a foreign culture try to remake your own. We know that Japan managed to survive, and eventually thrive, with many of its cities in ashes, and millions of its people dead. Dower tries to explain this process.
The upshot of leaving MacArthur mostly on the sidelines (I do not mean to imply that he is not present, because he is, and has to be; he just isn’t the center of attention), is that Dower takes a subject-matter oriented approach. Rather than follow a strict timeline, each individual chapter – which is further broken into numerous subsections – discusses a particular topic or theme.
In my experience, thematically-arranged books can sometimes lack consistency, because certain focal areas are more interesting than others. This holds true in this case. For me, the best parts of Embracing Defeat came early, when Dower describes the “ordinary” lives of the Japanese living in the aftermath of nuclear destruction, fire-bombings, and the realization that the world held them responsible for the deaths of untold millions. The scenes of near-famine are startling, while the repatriation of millions of defeated soldiers – and the way they were received – is fascinating. Equally good is Dower’s description of the drafting of the 1946 Constitution, written by a committee from SCAP headquarters over the course of a week. Dower has a lot of issues with the document, but it has endured. Dower also makes a rather forceful argument for the war-guilt of Emperor Hirohito, who was protected by SCAP and allowed to remain as a symbolic presence, even as the U.S. attempted to democratize Japan.
Dower is a fine writer, leavening his prose with a dry, understated wit. This style is particularly suited for the inevitable clash of cultures as East met West. This material can be pretty heavy, so it’s nice when Dower can find the humor in an entrepreneur who published a runaway bestseller by rushing a Japanese-English phrasebook into print.
There is a vast array of topics here, and not every chapter is equally absorbing. For example, I found my mind starting to wander a bit during Dower’s esoteric discussion of obscure Japanese writers and poets. More troubling, at least to me, is that Dower has an idiosyncratic notion of the relative weight to be given to the various issues that are covered. This was especially striking with regard to the economy. When I cracked these covers, I was interested in how Japan’s bureaucratic capitalism came into being. Economic issues, though, are mostly skimmed at the end of the book, in a fifteen page chapter. Meanwhile, Dower devotes twenty-seven pages to America’s censorship of Japanese books, cartoons, and films. To me, that’s a bit lopsided.
More troubling is Dower’s tone. By channeling the Japanese viewpoint, Dower has created a sympathetic portrait. That, in and of itself, is certainly not a bad thing. The problem, though, is that this postwar panorama tends to forget the precipitating events that led to America’s occupation in the first place. Obviously, Dower had no room – in an already cramped book – to even begin to summarize the massive cataclysm of World War II. Yet this reality, combined with Dower’s predisposition, tends to be unfair to the Allies in general, and the United States in particular.
The trajectory of Japanese historiography has been ineluctably altered by the triple convulsions of Fat Man and Little Boy, the fall of China to the Communists, and the outbreak of the Korean War. Without these three events, we would remember Japanese war crimes and outrages with far more clarity and emotion. Instead, WWII-era Japan is as much victim as victimizer. Japan is now a valued friend, while former Allies such as China and Russia (formerly the USSR) have become outright antagonists.
Dower’s bias in this regard is revealed in his discussion of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE). Since the day of its conception, the IMTFE has been a target of elite opinion. Dower mimics the tired accusation that the so-called Tokyo Trials amounted to “victor’s justice.” In doing so, he – like other IMTFE critics – fails to answer the question that is begged: With what would you have replaced the IMTFE? Does he support “loser’s justice,” wherein there is a high-level conference serving milkshakes and cookies, after which all is forgiven and everyone goes home? Is Dower saying that Tojo should have been allowed to retire to his estate, or even run for the Diet?
It’s interesting to me that seventy-five years after World War II, we are still hunting down elderly and decrepit Nazis, as though they can somehow pay for their sins. We all remember the evils of Nazism. But what about the search for Japanese war criminals? Suffice to say, the last Class A war criminal was released after approximately eleven years in jail, a sentence to which a petty thief in Florida might respond: Hold my beer.
(Dower himself has cited statistics showing that as many as fifteen million Chinese were killed by the Japanese. China itself insists on eighteen million civilian deaths, along with four million military deaths. I get that China’s fall to Communism has skewed the record, and that America officially stopped caring after Chiang fled to Taiwan. But if those figures are anywhere near correct, it’s more than double the Holocaust).
Back in 1986, in War Without Mercy, Dower mentioned working on the project that would turn into Embracing Defeat. At that time, he was sanguine about the cooperation between victor and vanquished, between West and East, between the U.S. and Japan.
Now, all Dower can see are the imperfections. Embracing Defeat spends a lot of time criticizing the U.S. occupations, often regarding things that are strikingly minor, considering the circumstances. Dower’s belaboring of censorship, to take one example, is sort of laughable compared to Japan’s own wartime censorship, backed by the Kempeitai (when they came for you, it wasn’t with a black pen).
The occupation of a “great power” is sort of a massive undertaking, making it difficult to judge. It just so happens, though, that there are a number of other occupations by which the U.S. occupation can be compared. It also happens that they occurred almost contemporaneously. First, there is Germany, which incorporated vast swaths of Europe into its dominion, an event that – you might have heard – included death camps, slave labor camps, murder squads, and sick medical experiments. Second, there is Japan itself, which killed millions of people, enslaved hundreds of thousands more, raped on an industrial scale, and also performed sick medical experiments. A less extreme example comes from the USSR, whose dominion over Eastern Europe was not exactly benign.
Dower does not recognize how bad it could have been. He is so busy tabulating all the things that went wrong, that he never acknowledges anything that went right. Sure, there were mistakes, there was ineptitude, there was the imposition of beliefs, and there was – especially on MacArthur’s part – no shortage of condescension. On the other hand, there was also idealism, munificence, and mercy.
world-war-ii
world-war-ii-pacific
112 likes
Like
Comment
Profile Image for Mikey B..
Mikey B.
1,053 reviews
444 followers
Follow
January 22, 2018
description
description
Before defeat, and after defeat
In the top photo Hirohito is in military uniform. After the surrender, in the photo with Douglas MacArthur, the uniform was discarded
This is a masterful account of Japan after their surrender in August, 1945. It is very nuanced, pointing out both positive and negative aspects of the U.S. occupation and how the Japanese coped and adapted. And the primary problem for most Japanese was food. Many were already mal-nourished before the surrender – and their struggle continued. Millions of returning soldiers and civilians from China and Korea added to the problem.
Hovering over all this, chameleon-like, is the Emperor Hirohito. Due to his reverence by the Japanese people he was spared of any involvement in causing and making war. War against China in Manchuria that started in 1931, a vicious racist war in China proper that started in 1937, and the war in the Pacific and Southeast Asia (Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia...) that commenced in December of 1941.
Hirohito managed to transfer himself from the head of the Imperial Japanese Army to become the Emperor of peace and a new Japan that was to have non-militarism as a basis of government. There were many outside Japan that put him in the same category as Hitler and Tojo (and there were some who thought that way in Japan too).
Douglas MacArthur was now the new supreme leader of the U.S. occupation forces in Japan. His main concern was to protect the Emperor from any type of tarnishment as a war leader. He went so far as to tell all the Japanese being prosecuted as war criminals to deny (lie) of Hirohito’s culpability in the war. MacArthur feared that if Hirohito were removed from the throne, Japan would descend into chaos. There is truth in this; many Japanese revered the Emperor as a deity. On a few occasions Hirohito considered abdicating, MacArthur told him not to.
Hirohito tried to humanize himself by emulating the British monarchy and going out amongst his people now and then. He never did deny that he was a deity, keeping some of his God-like aura.
Page 278 (my book)
Hirohito was also, as it turned out, resilient and malleable, blessed by the heavens – and by General MacArthur more particularly – to survive and prosper, while all around him, his loyal subjects were denounced, purged, charged with war crimes, even executed. The emperor’s role in Japan’s aggression was never seriously investigated. He was dissuaded by the Americans from acknowledging even moral responsibility for the repression and violence that had been carried out in his name and with his endorsement... the occupation authorities chose not merely to detach the emperor from his holy war, but to resuscitate him to the center of their new democracy...if the nations supreme secular and spiritual authority bore no responsibility, why should his ordinary subjects be expected to engage in self-reflection?
Page 179
Renovation and iconoclasm [in Japan] were strains as deeply embedded in consciousness as were the reverence for the past or acquiescence to the powers that be. For almost a century the Japanese had been socialized to anticipate and accommodate themselves to drastic change. When World War II ended, they were well prepared – not merely by the horrors and manifest failure of the war, but also by socialization of the past and even the psychic thrust of wartime indoctrination – to carry on the quest for a “new” Japan. In other words, it was entirely “traditional” to find pundits gathering soon after the surrender to engage in a “roundtable discussion” on “changing the world”. What changed, and drastically so, was how men and women now chose to define what that new world should be like.
The occupation caused a tremendous overhaul of Japanese society. When the Japanese government modified their constitution the Americans said “not good enough”. So a small U.S. staff worked to make a new, much more liberal constitution. It granted equal rights to women (something the U.S. constitution does not do), it allowed trade unions, educational reform, removed patriarchy, allowed more freedom... During the occupation there was an astounding growth of new periodicals, newspapers, movies, and new radio shows. Political prisoners, mostly communist or left-wing, were released from prison.
But there were restrictions, no criticism of the occupation forces or the Emperor was permitted. The author discusses how this lack of freedom to “question” the role of the Emperor and the emasculation of a “free press” led the Japanese readily to see themselves as victims, but not as victimizers. The top military cadre was blamed for the defeat – and the Emperor was removed from that clique. Also when China became communist in 1949 the Japanese atrocities in China became more and more overlooked. Communism was now the new enemy and Japan was needed as a buffer to stop the advancement of Soviet and Chinese forces. This also made the U.S. side with the right-wing in Japan.
This is a comprehensive examination of many aspects of Japan after the war. And it was then that the great Japanese companies like Toyota, Sony, and Nikon started to build up their vision of a future far different than what had recently occurred. Japan is obviously a country that is able to re-invent itself.
japan
journalism
pictures
...more
57 likes
Like
Comment
Profile Image for Dmitri.
Dmitri
229 reviews
203 followers
Follow
August 21, 2023
"After the defeat we became distrustful of the grownups around us, and felt the true way of living existed in the opposite of whatever they said. We came to believe that revolution and love were the best and most delicious things in this life, and because they are such good things grownups perversely lied." - Dazai Osamu, 'The Setting Sun' 1947
"We say defeated, defeated, but I don't think that's so. We've been ruined. Destroyed. [From one corner to the other the country of Japan is occupied, and every single one of us is a captive.] People who don't find this is shameful are fools." - Dazai Osamu (bracketed words censored by US military)
************
John W. Dower won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for this history of postwar Japan, in an attempt to see the occupation and reordering of society and polity from the viewpoint of the vanquished. Dower begins with the Hirohito radio address declaring an end to the war without admitting responsibility or defeat. Japan attacked and invaded for its survival and the liberation of Asia, not for aggression or aggrandizement. He now sought peace for humanitarian reasons, to save the world from nuclear devastation, asking the nation to make sacrifices along with his own, as he remained on the throne.
Despair
Dower describes the vast destruction in Japan and millions of Japanese soldiers and civilians spread through Asia and the Pacific. General MacArthur and American occupation forces were greeted by anger, joy, grief and relief as the displaced were repatriated to refugee camps. Veterans returned from futile and fanatic campaigns, embittered towards those who led them and shunned by others for losing. Atrocity reports followed them home. Widows, orphans and homeless were ostracized. Black markets, prostitutes and crime proliferated as imperialist politicians swiftly switched to liberal parties.
Purges
An American revolution came from above and communists released from Japanese prisons and endoctrinated POW's from Soviet camps briefly praised defeat of the old guard, but democracy by fiat and freedom under martial law were inherent contradictions. During the occupation of 1945-52 war crime trials were held for military leaders and ministers. A constitution drafted by US lawyers guaranteed freedom of speech, religion and human rights, renouncing prerogatives to wage war. Purges evolved from military officers who were banned from public office to communists as cold war began.
Reforms
Agrarian land reform and labor laws became a part of the Supreme Command's purview. The large banking-industrial monopolies known as zaibatsu were broken up by antitrust actions. It was a sweeping program to uproot the oligarchy who supported the war, as mass disarmament campaigns destroyed weapons and planes. Universal suffrage and equal protection for women shattered social conventions. Nation building, on a scale not seen before or after, was a source of anguish for conservative elites and hope in former subjects. It was seen as a boon granted by a new emperor, MacArthur.
Survival
Starvation was alleviated by aid shipments but hobbled by profiteers as people ate rodents and insects. Industrialists, politicians and military officers got rich while inflation and unemployment went off the scale. Disease was rampant, multiple families crowded into shacks. Alcoholism and drug abuse were widespread, robbery and murder commonplace. In time criminals and prostitutes were organized into yakuza gangs. People endured in misery, perhaps as a retribution for the misery caused by the war. Wartime myths of a unique racial and cultural harmony crashed into the postwar reality.
Corruption
The day before surrender military funds and supplies were diverted to private hands, more than the annual budget. The Bank of Japan made massive loans to military contractors, emptying its coffers before the allies arrived, as documents went up in smoke. Echoing Korean comfort women, state sponsored brothels were set up to service the arriving army and protect others chastity. It was ended in six months by occupation authorities as a violation of human rights, but prostitution persisted. Open air black markets sold all things from foodstuffs to industrial materials looted by the army.
Synthesis
Sexual commercialization took on western pop forms of pulp magazines, hollywood movies, strip shows and chorus lines. Along with the counterculture English loan words accrued. Writers repudiated tradition, espousing decadence. War was an illusion and defeat the human condition; a national body was superseded by the individual body. Marital relationships became more egalitarian, compared to the roles women had played prior to war. Factories retooled from machine guns to sewing machines, businesses arose catering to G.I.'s. People looked foward to a bright future, a new start from the past.
Victors
The top down approach of American reformers succeeded in dramatically transforming the status quo. MacArthur became a popular figure, although he rarely left headquarters and met only a handful of Japanese leaders. Engineering all facets of society from media to banks, schools, hospitals, libraries and government required an army of experts and a million G.I.'s. Mid level officers lived in upper class homes spared from the Tokyo fire bombing with staffs of servants. Relationships developed between conqueror and conquered, democracy and freedom learned to be loved on command.
Vanquished
While Americans lived in their colonial enclaves criticism was forbidden to the press and extraterritorial laws applied. The occupation resembled older forms of racial supremacy visited on the east by the west. MacArthur's command was a military bureaucracy, not unlike that of Hirohito. Rule was made through existing state organs requiring support of the throne. A pivot from monkey-man war propaganda and the detention of a 120,000 Japanese-Americans seemed to be needed. Democracy deemed impossible in Japan, the best that could be hoped for would be constitutional monarchy.
Revolution
Culture viewed conformist by the west was a traditional mix of manners and morals in the east and yet the resistance to reforms by average Japanese was much less than expected. Catastrophic defeat made many question the system that had brought it. Intellectuals went further, calling for socialism or communism, left of where the Americans had desired to go. After the Chinese revolution and the Korean war it would be time to fetter freedom, but before then the militarists were forced to resign from newsrooms and universities. Women won national elections and labor unions organized strikes.
Propaganda
International opinion grew in Allied and Asian countries to stage a war crimes trial of the emperor. The decision not to hold Hirohito accountable made it difficult for others to feel responsible and his retention complicated ideas of popular sovereignty. Wartime analysts had determined he would be useful later and propagandists created fictions he had been tricked and betrayed by gangster militarists. In order to save lives and maintain their control Allies planned to depend on blind obedience to the emperor. Royalist cronies argued all of Japan bore guilt for the defeat with the exception of Hirohito.
Trials
The Allies and the Imperial House collaborated on a rescript, renouncing divinity of the emperor and racial superiority, as Shinto religion was separated from the state. Hirohito was hailed in the US, a hero and leader of democratic reform, and seen as a bulwark against communism. Both the court and cabinet discussed his abdication, but MacArthur would have none of it. Princes who had been politicians and generals in the war were absolved, including those involved in atrocities. Trials were held through 1948 for crimes against peace and humanity. The emperor resolved to remain on the throne.
Democracy
After months of proposals from the government and political parties for a revised constitution, MacArthur issued a memo outlining three principles and ordered the army to write it up in a week. His tenets were to preserve the emperor, proscribe the military and end feudalism. With Hirohito's endorsement it was adopted into law although conservatives were aghast. He toured each prefect and endeared himself to the nation. Prior to surrender he never spoke in public and was rarely seen. Preservation of the emperor, no longer a sovereign, made the constitution acceptable to both polity and people.
Guilt
With values of freedom came a strict censorship. Criticism of MacArthur and the Americans was excised from newspapers, radio and theater. As Tokyo trials proceeded highly ranked officials were imprisoned or executed, eventually thousands across Asia and the Pacific. Charges of judicial idealism and victor's justice contributed to a later neo-nationalism. Many imagined drumhead court martials and firing squads rather than lengthy legal battles. Allies were enraged over abuse of prisoners, the most common conviction. In Manchuria lethal medical experiments had killed three thousand captives. The director was co-opted by the CIA and his research resumed.
Reconstruction
In the cold war charges against high profile capitalists and bureaucrats were dropped. The communists now a concern, occupation forces aligned with the right wing. Politicians who were purged returned to public office. The radical left became censored and removed from their positions of power. European victors attempted to re-establish rule in SE Asia, nuclear arms races ensued while war erupted again in Korea. MacArthur bowed out as Americans re-armed their former enemy. Japan's disasterous downfall would be rivaled by a miraculous recovery as Hirohito visited presidents and kings.
This book was meticulously researched by Dower, a Harvard Ph.D in Japanese history and language. Since then he was a professor in California State and an emeritus historian at MIT. It’s not weighed down by a ponderous academic style. Dower enlivens the text with photos and stories from the news and popular culture of the period, balanced by the political and economic facts. Arranged by topic, individual sections follow a timeline. Dower may be better read after 'Hirohito' by Herbert Bix, his fellow alumni and Pulitzer winner, a biography and political history of WWII Japan.
america
japan
55 likes
5 comments
Like
Comment
Profile Image for Max.
Max
351 reviews
425 followers
Follow
June 18, 2015
WWII left Japan decimated. Millions had died; millions were disabled, sick and starving; millions were stranded overseas facing reprisals; millions were missing including countless children; and millions were homeless, without family, without jobs, without anything. In the largest city, Tokyo, 65% of homes had been destroyed, in the second largest, Osaka, 57% and the third largest, Nagoya, 89%. Industry had been obliterated leaving few places to live or work. Those with the least suffered the most as their homes easily fed the huge fires from incendiary bombings. And Japanese culture exacerbated the plight of the already disadvantaged. Those who had lost their families, including children, were shunned, as were the many women who no longer had a man. Returning soldiers were looked on as failures and brutes as their atrocities became known. Returning enlisted men took reprisals on their former officers for the abusive way they had been treated during the war.
Hunger, lack of housing and poverty persisted for years after the war ended, leaving a widespread feeling of despair and victimization. People lived packed together in old train stations and shantytowns. Just finding a time and place to go to the bathroom was difficult. The search for food alone could occupy half of a person’s time. People sold whatever they had including their bodies just for food. Prostitution proliferated to service the hundreds of thousands of American GIs. Many women found this the only way to get by. Crime was rampant. The black market was endemic not only providing necessities but American goods often procured from GIs.
To alleviate this deprivation, Mac Arthur and the US administrators did little; rather they focused on demilitarization, prosecuting war criminals and democratization. The prevailing power structures in both government and industry were broken up. Authority was decentralized. Statements supporting war and subservience to the state were stricken from school texts and replaced with statements extolling democracy. Elections were held and woman given the right to vote, something unthinkable before. Japanese society was to be radically changed.
MacArthur was the new autocratic leader of Japan. He kept aloof from the populace only dealing with a few top leaders. American Japan experts and those who spoke Japanese were considered tainted and excluded from MacArthur’s staff. However China experts were welcome, their views shaped by Japanese atrocities in China. American administrators lived in “Little America” set in one of the few undamaged sectors of Tokyo. They lived a life unimaginable for most in the US in refurbished large houses replete with Japanese servants. The administrators were instructed in what passed for psychology at the time. They were told that the Japanese were a people that conformed to a herd mentality requiring authoritarian rule; that not all Japanese were “monkey men” and they could be made to be almost like a regular person, a John Doe, however they called the Japanese version “Joe Nip.” MacArthur’s staff looked askance at their wards with these preconceived notions.
Ordinary Japanese looked on MacArthur as a father figure who had freed them from oppression and brought freedom. The intellectual community’s response was more complex. Most had been complicit with the military regime and thus had lost respect of the people. However, the communists now had credibility for having defied the emperor; freed from jail they began espousing their cause. They saw democracy within the confines of Marxist doctrine.
Communism appealed to many citizens. Labor unions began organizing with strong communist backing. GHQ (US General Headquarters) and SCAP (Supreme Command for the Allied Powers) became alarmed at communist influence and the emperor was seen as useful in combating its rise. Demonstrations became organized culminating in one of 250,000 called “Food May Day” in 1946. As the Communists gained political power, GHQ organized the “Red Purge” in 1948. By 1949 GHQ had weeded out many thousands of activists from labor and the Japanese government. Conservative Japanese leaders would now hold power for the rest of the century.
Since MacArthur deemed the emperor necessary to lead the “herd”, Hirohito’s image had to be separated from those of leaders who would be held responsible for the war. As 1946 began war criminals were identified for prosecution. While the emperor’s former prime minister and closest adviser were included, the emperor was not. The emperor’s involvement in the war was kept hidden. MacArthur intervened ensuring damaging testimony against the emperor would not be presented. Back in the states many were calling for Hirohito’s scalp, but MacArthur cabled army Chief of Staff Eisenhower that Japan would disintegrate without the emperor. He claimed the emperor was essential if the US didn’t want to have to bring in more troops and administer the country directly. Washington deferred.
GHQ began an information campaign to purify the emperor and vilify his former cohorts. The new Japanese leadership concurred in this strategy. SCAP advised the emperor and Japanese supporters on how to proceed. They dressed the publicly awkward Hirohito in civilian garb and sent him on tours to meet the people to humanize him in a public relations campaign. MacArthur even called the emperor “sir” which he called no one else. The emperor had gone from god to mortal, from leader of a holy war to a symbol of democracy. Many Japanese especially ex-servicemen felt betrayed, believing the emperor should accept responsibility for the country’s destruction and that he should share their own plight.
Next came writing a new constitution. Discarding a conservative Japanese government draft, GHQ wrote one in secret in a week with three values provided by MacArthur: The emperor symbolically leads the country; Japan stays completely demilitarized; peerage is abandoned and a parliamentary democratic system is established. GHQ threatened to have a referendum on it if the government did not accept it. The government adopted it with minor changes in 1947. Unlike prior documents this was translated into simple Japanese. Booklets explained the law to the populace who generally accepted it.
GHQ established an extensive censorship program. At its height, the Civil Censorship Detachment had a staff of 6,000. Censored were all books and magazines, major daily newspapers, brochures, pamphlets, movies and thousands of radio scripts. Hundreds of thousands of private phone calls were monitored. Over 300 million pieces of mail were spot checked. Foreign materials were censored before they could be distributed. Prohibited was any defense of the Japanese war or war criminals, disparaging remarks about America, its war conduct including the atomic bombing, its occupation or its allies or the reconstituted Hirohito. Any reference to censorship itself was also prohibited. The 1946 John Hersey novel, Hiroshima, a best seller in America, was not allowed in Japanese until 1949. Even Tolstoy’s War and Peace was reviewed before being allowed in translation. Japan was being isolated from much of what was widely available in America and the rest of the world. Communist and leftist rhetoric was targeted particularly after the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. Left leaning media outlets were shut down, accompanied by a massive purge of “ultra-leftists” from Japanese media, government, labor and business.
The Japanese version of the Nuremburg trials, the Tokyo Tribunal started in May 1946. Unlike Nuremburg it had eleven judges from many different countries, most of which suffered Japanese atrocities in the war. Only a simple majority was required to convict. The defendants, all former leaders, were accused of “crimes against peace”. In late 1948, a majority decision sentenced seven to the gallows, sixteen to life, one to twenty years and one to seven. Those receiving death sentences were hung, the rest were all released by 1956. Who was indicted was often arbitrary as many ostensibly equally guilty were ignored, most notably the emperor protected by GHQ.
Most Japanese were concerned with who lost the war not the war’s impact on foreigners. The Japanese felt guilty because their family members, their countrymen died in vain. The immensity of their country’s atrocities made it difficult to honor fallen or returning servicemen. Again this was not so much out of sympathy for the victims as it was a loss of respect for the perpetrators and the long shadow they had cast over all of Japanese society. The search for reasons for the loss of the war found an “acceptable” answer, science. The Japanese saw themselves as too technologically backward to have won. America had the atomic bomb, clear evidence of the importance of technical superiority. Thus moral, structural and political failures of Japanese society could be ignored with this simple one word answer. This answer led to Japan’s focus on high tech following the occupation. Science wasn’t the only answer offered. Leftist’s blamed failed leadership and capitalism in a Marxist take on the war. Perhaps the most fascinating answer was philosopher Hajime Tanabe’s Metanoetics. Tanabe, who had studied with Heidegger in Germany, combined the Buddhist concept of “absolute nothingness” with Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. He believed neither war nor any other pursuit of hegemony or riches could solve Japan’s problems. Only each individual deriving meaning from reflection on everyday life would build a better society, not striving for glory and rewards. Tanabe was influential, but Japan embraced the first answer, science, and its incumbent rewards.
MacArthur and America’s occupation became less idealistic and more pragmatic by 1949 with the fall of China, the Korean War, and Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. In what was tagged in Japan as the “reverse course”, SCAP supported right wing conservative leaders and dropped charges against suspected war criminals. As America anticipated the need to rearm Japan to fight communism, it gave up on establishing a pure democracy. Supplying the American war effort in Korea with what were called “special procurements” reignited Japan’s economy. SCAP had idled much of Japanese industry when it broke up the consortium of family owned large corporations known as zaibatsu. This had kept the economy from recovering, but Americans felt the Japanese were getting what they deserved. The silver lining was the opening for many smaller companies. Some went on to make it big, for example, Nikon, Canon, Honda, Sony and Komatsu. The large banks were not broken up. They became the basis for the new Japanese industrial oligarchy known as keiretsu. The American occupation left a legacy of centralization and government implementation of economic policy. Now the keiretsu and government led by American favored conservative capitalists could work hand in hand to plan Japan’s economic revival.
Dower’s book was at times fascinating and at times a bit of a slog, but it was definitely worthwhile with three themes I found important. First it helped clear up misconceptions about the Japanese people and their culture. Common are racist views from cruel and heartless based on WWII atrocities to conformist and blindly loyal. Dower shows these easy characterizations to be superficial. The Japanese appear much more diverse and complex with behavior dictated by their circumstances. Second, the book said much about American foreign policy - arrogant, alternately idealistic and opportunistic. MacArthur’s autocratic administration shifted goals quickly to reflect America’s political imperatives of the moment. An altruistic effort to establish democracy gave way to pragmatism and the red scare. Instead of a bastion of peace Japan was now expected to be an arsenal in the fight against global communism. Japan became a pawn in America’s game. American expediency overrode moral values, just what America saw in Japan before the war. Third, Dower showed how the occupation led to the Japanese miracle of the 1960’s and 1970’s. The family owned zaibatsu were dismantled a new more efficient oligarchy, the keiretsu, established. Building on an occupational legacy of centralized economic direction, government and industry could now work closely together without the need to fund a large military. This led to the well-coordinated economic trajectory that took a decimated country to one that would dominate world markets with products from Toyota cars to Sony electronics.
world-history
48 likes
Like
Comment
Profile Image for Anthony.
Anthony
259 reviews
80 followers
Follow
October 20, 2023
The Great Rebuild.
When the Emperor Hirohito gave his surrender speech on 15/08/1945, Japan was completely devastated and utterly defeated. The militarists had failed and the empire was left broken, with the victors standing over them, ready to impose their unlimited will. Two atomic bombs, nine years of war and millions of lives lost had changed Japan’s path forever. General Douglas A. MacArthur was given the task to lead the allied occupation, something which would formally continue until 1952, seven years after the war’s end. During this time he would have unprecedented power and was almost de facto head of state. In some ways he was the last shogun. What followed was a social and economic revolution, married with traditional Japanese values and characteristics, which many American or westerner had not considered or encountered before. This book reeks the story of Japan’s shift from brutal feudalism to western democracy.
John Dower is an excellent writer, who provides insight and analysis into an area where few would be able to understand or explain in such a layered way. He ventures into this dark period in Japan’s history and lights flares when he comes across previously untrodden paths. It is a pleasure to follow him down. This is the shady world of the black market, the mass shame imposed on the returning defeated soldier, the prostitution of Japanese women to the huge influx of American military personnel. The so called ‘pan pan’ girls. A subservient nation that almost immediately rejects the war and the war crimes committed and turns it back on the old regime, looking forward to what new Japan holds. Within this, there is the emperor, who was defended by his people and in the end needed by MacArthur to complete stability. Hirohito never really considered abdicating in favour of his son the Crown Prince or another relative. He also never took any responsibility for the military decisions made. He was also relinquished of guilt by those few who did stand trial, they protected him until the end.
From the moment of the occupation, Japan and the USA were bound together. Dower sees this a life long marriage, but rejects the notion MacArthur delivered democracy and Japan lives happily ever after. There was huge censorship, the war, the bombs or the occupation could not be discussed or criticised. Even criticism of the USSR could not be made in the early years, even though hundreds of thousands of Japanese prisoners of war languished in Soviet camps. Dower is also critical of the Tokyo war crimes trials. This was ‘victors justice’, with even the most lenient of hearings being a farce. They were almost kangaroo courts with trial to execution being conducted within 24 hours or so. But as Australian Judge Andrew Webb is noted as saying, with Hirohito on trial, they all fall flat as it was he who they acting in the name of and took orders from.
Another point Dower highlights is the way that the 1946 Constitution was written within a week and then imposed. This should be considered as absolute hubris. A foreign occupier imposing a new state law within a single week over a country that it knows little about with minimum consultation. It however, must be noted this constitution is unchanged to this day and the largest critics are in fact now Americans. Dower overall is critical of the occupation and feels it is a depressed time for Japan. It is full of bureaucracy, bad decisions, incompetence and inconsistency which also influenced the direction of the Cold War. For Dower this period did not truly end until the death of Hirohito in 1989, when the new Japan was finally ready to announce itself to the world. This is the Japan of today. A great book, written about a fascinating topic.
wwii
33 likes
6 comments
Like
Comment
Profile Image for Murtaza .
Murtaza
686 reviews
3,390 followers
Follow
April 15, 2019
One of my major interests is the sociocultural and political evolution of Asian societies in modernity. The preeminent society among these — the one people that had seemingly "made it" in the 20th century — was of course Japan. The Japanese were an inspiration for reformers from Turkey to China. Even African Americans looked to the Japanese with hope. For a time Japan showed that it was possible for the colored peoples of the world to sit on equal footing with Europe and America. Their story went awry however. Their modern project ultimately led the Japanese to become colonialists just like the Westerners whose civilization they had seemingly mastered. This led them into a campaign of aggressive war and genocide directed mainly against their Asian neighbors. This project came to a horrifying end in the atomic explosions that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ushering in a new Japan in their wake.
This book is the story of Japan after those explosions. The United States occupied the country as de facto military rulers until 1952. Between 1945 and 1952 no Japanese were even allowed to travel outside their borders. The Americans instituted a very strange regime. On one hand, they were almost as atavistic in their behavior as medieval conquerors. They unleashed themselves on Japanese women in the crudest manner possible. The legacy of this sexual conquest and the perceived emasculation of the Japanese men they had just faced on the battlefield continues to color the U.S.-Japan relationship. The arrogant, frankly racist attitudes of ordinary Americans towards the defeated Japanese were in evidence all over the conquered country. I feel in some sense this reflected a desire to put an emboldened Asian people back in their place. The Americans truly lived as conquerors with the Japanese as their servants. The crushing poverty and exploitation of Japan during the U.S. occupation was shocking. Living as a defeated person means cramming into a full subway car while a spacious one nearby sits vacant, reserved for the new rulers. It means being a domestic worker in the luxurious home of your conqueror while your own people starve for lack of food. This was Japan during the postwar years.
At the same time, by destroying the old militaristic Japanese order the Americans unleashed the economic energies of the country in the long-term. The Japanese are undoubtedly a gifted people. And the Americans, for all their contempt, had not come to permanently enslave them. Once it became clear that the Cold War was about to kick off with Communist China and Russia nearby, Japan was recast as an important bulwark. The Americans helped put the new Japan on its feet and on the path to becoming the economic powerhouse that it was for the rest of the century. While its growth has faltered tremendously, Japan remains a modern and developed country. Anyone who has visited can attest that for all its structural flaws it remains an impressive society. The U.S. military regime set in place lasting structures and practices, some good and some troubling.
I was astonished by this book. The suffering of the postwar Japanese was almost unfathomable. Even more interesting from an ideological standpoint was the disillusionment over the cult of the Emperor after the war. The "holy war" had been fought in the name of a God-King, Hirohito, who ruled Japan as its living divine monarch descended from the Sun God, Amaterasu. After the war ended in defeat, people were stunned and heartbroken, dazed and furious. I will never forget the story of Watanabe Kiyoshi, one of the millions of young men who had fought and seen his comrades die on behalf of the Emperor, only to be filled with disgust and rage at the monarch's postwar kowtowing to the U.S. occupation. What had all that death and waste been for? The ideology of Imperial Japan reminds me much of the apocalyptism of ISIS and similar groups — both obsessed with divine empire building and rushing to a glorious death.
Judge Radhabinod Pal was one of those who stood in judgement at the Tokyo War Crime Tribunals. He and even many of the Americans who took part felt the whole proceeding to be an exercise in victors justice. The war against Japan had been a race war par excellence, on both sides. The Japanese had committed heinous war crimes. But no one could deny the American atrocities staring them back in the face, the evidence lying in the smoldering cities of Japan that had once been full of quotidian life. Americans like Bonner Fellers who both loved and loathed Japan played an important role in the country's remaking, as did the singular General Douglas MacArthur. I was undeniably impressed with the competence, confidence and forward-thinking attitude displayed by these men, truly stewards of a powerful empire. Having said that, most of the Americans based in Japan during the occupation however did not think much. They simply enjoyed the benefits that have accrued to conquerors in a conquered land since time immemorial.
This is riveting history of the type that you seldom come across, from a true scholar of Japan. Over 600 pages the book was an absolute page-turner, even to a lay reader such as myself. I will definitely seek out Dowers other book on race in the Pacific War, a subject of which there were strong allusions to in this excellent work.
30 likes
Like
Comment
Profile Image for Stefania Dzhanamova.
Stefania Dzhanamova
534 reviews
465 followers
Follow
October 26, 2020
In his brilliantly researched work, John Dower narrates Japan's experience of defeat and occupation at the end of WWII from the Japanese point of view. The book examines the hopes, visions, and dreams, as well as the despair and exhaustion, of the defeated country and its people as they sought to remake their identity and and values in the aftermath of the war. Dower places the motley array of Japanese contradictious responses – guilt and liberation, selective forgetting, old disillusions and new hopes – against the background of an American occupation, which according to him, was at once high-minded and visionary, arrogant and imperalist.
Central to the work are three intertwined political issues whose resolution would highly affect Japan's post-war course – the emperor, the constitution and democratization, and the war crime tribunals. In discussing these, Dower also offers new cultural and social perspectives on Japan and the Japanese-American relationship, dismissing many stereotypes.
Dower begins his cultural history with the anguish of physically and materially "shattered lives" at the end of the Second World War, and graphically captures all the shock, exhaustion, and devastation. He vividly conveys the loss and confusion the Japanese experienced, the huge scale of social displacement, "food-wretchedness", and missing people. However, aside from the economic and social mysery, Dower also shows the transformative effects of defeat: the Japanese began reshaping their future identity and discovering new aspirations. He tackles this topic at three levels.
Firstly, Dower studies the "bridges of language", revealing that some of the pre-war language was emptied of its old meanings and re-filled with new ones, "like so many suitcases." Those linguistic bridges, he explains, were ways of escaping the past. Yet, words and phrases also carried past resonances too, and the possibility to move on coexisted with the temptation to cross back.
Secondly, he studies "the subcultures of defeat." For example, he argues that the world of prostitution under the occupation was both an arena of sexual exploitation and a channel for the development of interracial affection and the undermining of old racial stereotypes. Likewise, a new urban "demimonde" introduced nihilism and hardship into lifestyles of deliberate decadence, and flourishing authors of pulp literature began to challenge traditional social and gender roles. Here, Dower successfully captures "the bittersweet ambiance of life on the margins in a defeated land."
Thirdly, the author studies what he calls "the virtuoso turnabout" of the Japanese intelligentsia in embracing democratization. Before and during the war, the Japanese state had seduced or cowered intellectuals into supporting militarism with a remarkable degree of success – almost no opposing intelligentsia remained. The sudden post-war conversion could be viewed as hypocrisy. Yet, Dower paints a more complex picture. On one hand, the intelligentsia associated the new ideas with those of the 1920s, with the past before the rise of the militaristic regime. On the other hand, remorse was a serious factor. According to Dower, it might, for instance, have provoked the remarkable transformation of Japanese teachers from "drill sergeants of emperial system orthodoxy" to fervent guardians of the new democracy.
Aside from relating the socio-cultural transformations of Japan, John Dower also presents the early American occupation, which emerges in his book as the boldest attempt to refashion another society as a democratic nation ever made. "Initially," writes Dower, "the Americans imposed a root-and-branch agenda of 'demilitarization and democratization' that was in every sense a remarkable display of arrogance idealism." Drawing upon plenty of archival, documentary, and public sources, he highlights the arrogance and blunders of MacArthur, who appears to be larger-than-life, just like in the iconic photo of him towering over a subservient Hirohito.
Dower's work also effectively shows the hybrid character of the occupation. While MacArthur ruled with the absolute authority of a military dictator who suffered no criticism, the Japanese people, from the highest levels of imperial and state power to the grassroots, still managed to shape many of the outcomes, whether by reinforcing or by subtly subverting the plans of their American rulers.
Emperor Hirohito attracts Dower's attention with his elusiveness, and the author sets out to dispel the long cultivated myth of Hirohito as a passive figure. For example, he points out to the emperor's pivotal initiative of sacrificing Okinawa to American strategic designs by offering the States a virtually unrestricted military use of the island and continuing U.S colonial rule there long after the main islands were returned to Japan. According to Dower, this was a shrewd ploy for reducing U.S demands for bases on the home islands and encouraging the States to end the occupation earlier. It was also, as Dower sarcastically remarks, thoroughly consistent with the Japanese military's sacrifice of the Okinawan people, one forth of whom perished in the final battle of WWII.
Embracing Defeat also emphasizes the surprisingly democratic and progressive character of the U.S-drafted Japanese constituion and other occupation policies, such as the enfranchisement of women, even though it also exposes the irony and the limits of imperial democracy.
In summary, John Dower's nuanced appreciation of the achievements of the American occupation in creating a lasting basis for a democratic, peaceful, capitalist Japan, however, goes hand in hand with sharp criticism of the misunderstandings and jingoism of elites on both sides. Regarding the bold action ordering the secret drafting by SCAP's government section of the Japanese constitution, he comments, "The line between Supreme Commander and Supreme Being was always a fine one in MacArthur's mind. In these momentous days of ealry February 1947 he came close to obliterating the distinction completely." Likewise, Dower exposes the self-serving actions of the Emperor, court officials, and much of the military and business elite: in disguising Hirohito's responsibility for the war committed in his name, in attempting to sabotage the democratic provisions of the constitution, and in plundering the national treasury for private profit in the immediate aftermath of the surrender. Therefore, the Japan that emerged politically and socially transformed from the ashes of defeat was, Dower argues, by far not an American creation. Rather, it was a product of the complex and often contradictory synergy of Americans and Japanese.
Embracing Defeat is an impressive study of post-war Japanese culture and politics and the nature of the early U.S occupation. Recommendable.
us-foreign-policy
wwii
27 likes
Like
Comment
Profile Image for E. G..
E. G.
1,112 reviews
784 followers
Follow
March 6, 2019
Acknowledgments
Introduction
--Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II
Notes
Photo and Illustration Credits
Index
5-star
john-dower
non-fiction
...more
26 likes
Like
Comment
Profile Image for Dan.
Dan
1,208 reviews
52 followers
Follow
June 1, 2019
An entertainer in Tokyo was singing subversive songs while accompanying himself on the violin. Investigators attended a performance and were shocked. They heard lyrics like “Seducing Japanese women is easy, with chocolate and chewing gum.” More scandalous yet was this line: “Everybody is talking about democracy, but how can we have democracy with two emperors?” Democracy, Hirohito, and MacArthur lampooned, all in a single breath! The Americans banned the show.
Embracing Defeat was written by John Dower, an MIT scholar on modern Japan, and won the National Book Award for Non-Fiction in 1999 and the Pulitzer too.
Every once in a while I read a history book where the author anticipates every question that I am likely to pose. This was that kind of read for me. Most of the material in this book is highly original and covers the six years of American occupation following WWII and unsurprisingly this was the most disruptive in Japan’s history. With clarity and nuance, Dower addresses questions like the following:
What was it like for the Japanese citizens in those months and initial years after the surrender? How did they get through a depression worse than America’s Great Depression? How did Japan turn it around so quickly? Why were the Japanese people so fond of MacArthur? Did most Japanese citizens know of Nagasaki and Hiroshima? What forms of censorship did America implement? How did America change Japan’s constitution? Why did Japan refuse to re-arm when MacArthur asked them to during the Korean War?
Perhaps the most discussed theme in the book was around Emperor Hirohito. In the months following Japan’s surrender, the Supreme Command for the Allied Powers “pulled out all the stops” to prevent Emperor Hirohito from war crimes prosecution by the American government. MacArthur further warned that if the Emperor were indicted that the nation of Japan would “disintegrate”. In contemplating a possible abdication, a detached Hirohito opined that maybe could follow his passion into the field of marine biology. It is not at all clear if he seriously took the likelihood of a conviction and the penalty of death. But in the end it was MacArthur who got his way with Eisenhower and Hirohito remained Emperor until his death in 1989. The fact that dozens of Japanese leaders were executed for war crimes including PM Tojo and that the Emperor remained in power was hard to square for most.
The other large focus was on the Japanese people who, for the most part, showed great deference to the leadership of the occupying forces and to MacArthur in particular. They embraced the new concept of democracy although admittedly America’s thumb was on every scale of the political system. The author presents some dark topics to be sure. There is a riveting chapter on how many Japanese citizens never forgave the leaders for evading responsibility and also other excellent chapters on censorship of books and films.
I would have liked to have seen more personal stories about select individuals and discussion of more cities beyond Tokyo but I guess adding those topics to an already lengthy book would have made for an exhausting read. Beyond MacArthur, who is always entertaining to read about, it is the smaller topics that pack the big punches such as the coverage on prostitution (Geisha and otherwise), the animosity of ex Japanese soldiers to the American G.I. presence, the systematic throttling of the Communist minority in the new democracy, the starvation years, MacArthur’s very clever (and probably wise) manipulation of the Diet to change the constitution to end the feudal system.
5 stars. I can’t recommend this book enough — that is for anyone who is remotely curious about this period of history.
5-star-history-and-non-fiction
5-star-overall
national-book-award-non-fiction
...more
24 likes
Like
Comment
Profile Image for Christopher Saunders.
Christopher Saunders
983 reviews
894 followers
Follow
November 27, 2023
John W. Dower's Embracing Defeat offers a compelling account of postwar Japan, from the dropping of the atomic bombs to the end of American occupation seven years later. During that time, Dower writes, the Japanese were forced to confront the shocking end of empire and the horrendous destruction wrought about them by Allied bombing. The response took many forms: while a handful of hardcore nationalists defended Japan's record, most in the immediate aftermath felt a mixture of grief for its losses, denial over the country's overseas atrocities and relief at its ending. Liberals and leftists viewed Japan's defeat as an opportunity to destroy the monarchy and its militarist allies, while conservatives cut deals with the occupiers to retain what power they could. Elaborate war crimes trials targeted military and political leaders but left Emperor Hirohito (who disingenuously disclaimed responsibility for the war) unscathed, to avoid alienating the public as the Cold War approached. Ordinary Japanese dealt with the desolation from prolonged bombing and military deaths, battled starvation and disease and struggled to develop a fresh national identity in the face of foreign occupation. The Americans, led by the imperious Douglas MacArthur, ruled both with a heavy hand and racist assumptions about the "Oriental mind," but also instituted liberal reforms in government, economics and gender reforms that helped Japan emerge as a functional, if flawed democracy. Dower shows that Japan, though momentarily humbled by their defeat, emerged from occupation with its people embracing free press and government, technological ingenuity, a repudiation of foreign adventurism and a vibrant, self-reflective culture - while, paradoxically, embracing a heavily corporatized economy and traces of nationalism that downplay the darker strands of its recent history. A stellar, thought-provoking book showing a country and people reinventing themselves after a world-historical trauma.
2022-reads
pulitzer-prize-nonfiction
25 likes
1 comment
Like
Comment
Displaying 1 - 10 of 403 reviews
More reviews and ratings
No comments:
Post a Comment