The first definitive history of the transformation of Japanese society under American occupation after World War II. This major new work by America's foremost historian of modern Japan draws on a vast range of Japanese sources to offer an extraordinarily thorough, complex, & rich analysis of how shattering defeat in World War II followed by over six years of military occupation by the United States affected every level of Japanese society-in ways that neither the victor nor the vanquished could anticipate. Here is the history of an extraordinary moment in the history of Japanese culture, when new values warred with old, & when early ideals of 'peace & democracy' were soon challenged by the 'reverse course' decision to incorporate Japan into the cold-war Pax Americana. Embracing Defeat chronicles not only the material & psychological impact of utter defeat but also the early emergence of dynamic countercultures that gave primacy to the private as opposed to public spheres-in short, a liberation from totalitarian wartime control. John Dower shows how the tangled legacies of this intense, turbulent, & unprecedented interplay of conqueror & conquered, West & East, wrought the utterly foreign & strangely familiar Japan of today. An extraordinarily thorough, complex, & rich analysis of how shattering defeat in World War II followed by over six years of military occupation by the United States affected every level of Japanese society--in ways that neither the victor nor the vanquished could anticipate. Here is the history of an extraordinary moment in the history of Japanese culture, when new values warred with old, & when early ideals of peace & democracy were soon challenged by the reverse course decision to incorporate Japan into the cold-war Pax Americana. A definitive history of the transformation of Japanese society under American occupation after World War II. 40 photos. |