Book Review: Embracing Defeat

Author: John W. Dower

Reviewer: Mark Groenewold

Date: September, 2005

A truly remarkable history text about Japan during the post-WW2 era, Dower has a marvelously balanced, insightful, and objective eye when examining the many facets of Japanese family life, politics, economics, and military policies of Japan during the American occupation after the Second World War.

The war is over. The emperor gives his famous formal address on the radio. His voice admonishes the citizens of Japan to "endure the unendurable" as the nation admits defeat and welcomes in an American occupation that would last the better part of the next decade. These are extremely turbulent times for the domestic scene of the nation. The bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been dropped. Cities have been laid flat. The Japanese military war machine has been rubbed out of existence. The echoes of thousands upon thousands of Asians who perished during Japanese aggression are beginning to fade.

From out of the rubble and smoke and ashes, something new must grow or the nation will die.

Dower takes us on a very interesting and powerfully insightful journey of the Japan that survived the war. The war of Japan was one of parallel aggression to the Nazis of Germany. The wanton disregard for human life on their vanquished conquests was cruel beyond our current comprehensions of evil. Reckless and malicious leaders in governments both in Europe and Asia have been beaten back. It was now time to examine what to do with the countries that they came from. Who is responsible? Who is to blame? How can any kind of justice repay the incalculable losses that the world has known?

How can we continue to live in the shadows of so many graves?

Somehow we have. So much has changed in Japan since the Second World War. The army has been radically changed. The government has been changed. The role of emperor in Japan has changed. The economy has gone from third to first world status in the span of a single generation. The culture has changed. The people have been dramatically changed. And yet, there are threads of Japanese human psychology that remain the same. There are elements of Japanese nationalism that remain. There are artifacts of governmental structures and ways of doing business that have never changed.

From the arrival of the first American GIs, to the installation of "democracy from above", to the machinations to preserve the Emperor, to the clamp-down of American censorship on the Japanese press, to the drafting of the first "original" Japanese constitution, to the ridiculousness of the Tokyo Tribunal attempting to prosecute war criminals, Dower explores, in this meticulously researched book a pivotal period of Japanese history. I was blown away by so much of this era that I did not know. I am very grateful to Mr. Dower for providing such a marvelous book. The sheer volume of material available here that focuses on a very specific era of Japan’s post-war history is tremendously informative.

Smart. Insightful. Well-written. This Pulitzer Prize winning text is highly recommended.

Mark Groenewold
Kanazawa, Japan
September, 2005