Following his National Book Critics Award winning War Without Mercy on the Pacific theater, Dower (history, Massachusetts Institute of Technology) examines the immediate aftermath of World War II. He draws on a wide range of Japanese sources to illuminate how the shattering defeat and six years of US military occupation affected every level of society in ways no one anticipated. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

The writing of history doesn't get much better than this. MIT professor Dower (author of the NBCC Award-winning War Without Mercy) offers a dazzling political and social history of how postwar Japan evolved with stunning speed into a unique hybrid of Western innovation and Japanese tradition. The American occupation of Japan (1945-1952) saw the once fiercely militarist island nation transformed into a democracy constitutionally prohibited from deploying military forces abroad. The occupation was fraught with irony as Americans, motivated by what they saw as their Christian duty to uplift a barbarian race, attempted to impose democracy through autocratic military rule. Dower manages to convey the full extent of both American self-righteousness and visionary idealism. The first years of occupation saw the extension of rights to women, organized labor and other previously excluded groups. Later, the exigencies of the emergent Cold War led to American-backed "anti-Red" purges, pro-business policies and the partial reconstruction of the Japanese military. Dower demonstrates an impressive mastery of voluminous sources, both American and Japanese, and he deftly situates the political story within a rich cultural context. His digressions into Japanese cultureÄhigh and low, elite and popularÄare revealing and extremely well written. The book is most remarkable, however, for the way Dower judiciously explores the complex moral and political issues raised by America's effort to rebuild and refashion a defeated adversaryÄand Japan's ambivalent response to that embrace. Illustrations. (Mar.) From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Dower's magisterial narrative eloquently tells the story of the postwar occupation of Japan by departing from the usual practice of making the story part of General MacArthur's biography and instead focusing on the citizens. With historical sweep and cultural nuance, and using numerous personal stories of survival, loss, and rededication, he follows the astonishing social transformation of a people. (LJ 4/1/99) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Acknowledgments	p. 15
Introduction	p. 19
Part I. Victor and Vanquished
1. Shattered Lives	p. 33
Euphemistic Surrender	p. 34
Unconditional Surrender	p. 39
Quantifying Defeat	p. 45
Coming Home ... Perhaps	p. 48
Displaced Persons	p. 54
Despised Veterans	p. 58
Stigmatized Victims	p. 61
2. Gifts From Heaven	p. 65
"Revolution from Above"	p. 69
Demilitarization and Democratization	p. 73
Imposing Reform	p. 80
Part II. Transcending Despair
3. Kyodatsu: Exhaustion and Despair	p. 87
Hunger and the Bamboo-Shoot Existence	p. 89
Enduring the Unendurable	p. 97
Sociologies of Despair	p. 104
Child's Play	p. 110
Inflation and Economic Sabotage	p. 112
4. Cultures of Defeat	p. 121
Servicing the Conquerors	p. 123
"Butterflies," "Onlys," and Subversive Women	p. 132
Black-Market Entrepreneurship	p. 139
"Kasutori Culture"	p. 148
Decadence and Authenticity	p. 154
"Married Life"	p. 162
5. Bridges of Language	p. 168
Mocking Defeat	p. 170
Brightness, Apples, and English	p. 172
The Familiarity of the New	p. 177
Rushing into Print	p. 180
Bestsellers and Posthumous Heroes	p. 187
Heroines and Victims	p. 195
Part III. Revolutions
6. Neocolonial Revolution	p. 203
Victors as Viceroys	p. 204
Reevaluating the Monkey-Men	p. 213
The Experts and the Obedient Herd	p. 217
7. Embracing Revolution	p. 225
Embracing the Commander	p. 226
Intellectuals and the Community of Remorse	p. 233
Grass-Roots Engagements	p. 239
Institutionalizing Reform	p. 244
Democratizing Everyday Language	p. 251
8. Making Revolution	p. 254
Lovable Communists and Radicalized Workers	p. 255
"A Sea of Red Flags"	p. 259
Unmaking the Revolution from Below	p. 267
Part IV. Democracies
9. Imperial Democracy: Driving the Wedge	p. 277
Psychological Warfare and the Son of Heaven	p. 280
Purifying the Sovereign	p. 287
The Letter, the Photograph, and the Memorandum	p. 289
10. Imperial Democracy: Descending Partway From Heaven	p. 302
Becoming Bystanders	p. 302
Becoming Human	p. 308
Cutting Smoke with Scissors	p. 314
11. Imperial Democracy: Evading Responsibility	p. 319
Confronting Abdication	p. 320
Imperial Tours and the Manifest Human	p. 330
One Man's Shattered God	p. 339
12. Constitutional Democracy: GHQ Writes a New National Charter	p. 346
Regendering a Hermaphroditic Creature	p. 347
Conundrums for the Men of Meiji	p. 351
Popular Initiatives for a New National Charter	p. 355
SCAP Takes Over	p. 360
GHQ's "Constitutional Convention"	p. 364
Thinking about Idealism and Cultural Imperialism	p. 370
13. Constitutional Democracy: Japanizing the American Draft	p. 374
"The Last Opportunity for the Conservative Group"	p. 376
The Translation Marathon	p. 379
Unveiling the Draft Constitution	p. 383
Water Flows, the River Stays	p. 387
"Japanizing" Democracy	p. 391
Renouncing War ... Perhaps	p. 394
Responding to a Fait Accompli	p. 399
14. Censored Democracy: Policing the New Taboos	p. 405
The Phantom Bureaucracy	p. 406
Impermissible Discourse	p. 410
Purifying the Victors	p. 419
Policing the Cinema	p. 426
Curbing the Political Left	p. 432
Part V. Guilts
15. Victor's Justice, Loser's Justice	p. 443
Stern Justice	p. 444
Showcase Justice: The Tokyo Tribunal	p. 449
Tokyo and Nuremberg	p. 454
Victor's Justice and Its Critics	p. 461
Race, Power, and Powerlessness	p. 469
Loser's Justice: Naming Names	p. 474
16. What do you Tell the Dead when you Lose?	p. 485
A Requiem for Departed Heroes	p. 486
Irrationality, Science, and "Responsibility for Defeat"	p. 490
Buddhism as Repentance and Repentance as Nationalism	p. 496
Responding to Atrocity	p. 504
Remembering the Criminals, Forgetting Their Crimes	p. 508
Part VI. Reconstructions
17. Engineering Growth	p. 525
"Oh, Mistake!"	p. 526
Visible (and Invisible) Hands	p. 528
Planning a Cutting-Edge Economy	p. 536
Unplanned Developments and Gifts from the Gods	p. 540
Epilogue: Legacies/Fantasies/Dreams	p. 547
Notes	p. 565
Photo Credits	p. 651
Index	p. 653

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