Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II

"I could have chosen many others, but personally I’m very interested in that period of the occupation by largely American troops just after World War II. It’s one of the most extraordinary episodes in modern history. It was the first time that Japan was occupied in its own history, and the world that was created at that time shaped post-war Japan. I think the author, John Dower, has caught that period – with all its complexity and its absurdity and its benevolence and its dark sides – better than anyone else, even, as far as I know, in Japanese. It’s not only a great work of history, but it’s beautifully written. I think history writing at its best should be, and can be, a form of literature and this would be a good example. That’s not really the way he approaches it. He analyses it really as a…confrontation isn’t quite the word, but a very peculiar meeting of two very different cultures and civilisations. Even though Japan had already been influenced by the United States as well as Europe for almost 100 years, in 1945 it was still an extraordinary meeting of cultures that was sometimes a confrontation and sometimes a happy mix."

"This is a key study in the effects on the Japanese of the defeat of Japan by the United States in World War II. It shows the actual effects of a ruthless military victory magnanimously enforced by the victor over a defeated nation, and the beneficial consequences that followed for millions of people. The fundamental reason for this success is the shift in the ideas held by the Japanese people. In all the five books I have chosen the role of ideas is essential to the workings of foreign policy and war."