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Japan in War and Peace: Selected Essays
Drawing on decades of experience and research, John W. Dower, author of the award-winning War Without Mercy , highlights for the first time the resemblances between wartime, postwar, and contemporary Japan. He argues persuasively that the origins of many of the institutions responsible for Japan's dominant position in today's global economy derive from the rapid military industrialization of the 1930s, and not from the post-occupation period, as many have assumed. A brilliant lead essay, "The Useful War," sets the tone for the volume by incisively showing how much of Japan's postwar political and economic structure was prefigured in the wartime organization of that country.
384 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
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About the author
John W. Dower
34 books141 followersJohn W. Dower is the author of Embracing Defeat, winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize; War without Mercy, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Cultures of War. He is professor emeritus of history at MIT. In addition to authoring many books and articles about Japan and the United States in war and peace, he is a founder and codirector of the online “Visualizing Cultures” project established at MIT in 2002 and dedicated to the presentation of image-driven scholarship on East Asia in the modern world. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 27, 2014
DOWER ON JAPAN
I came to this book having already read John Dowers ground breaking and award winning "Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Aftermath of World War II", a book that I enjoyed immensely, and I wasn't disappointed in this earlier collection of essays.
The essays are well written and though they cover a period in time from the Meiji era (1868) to the early 1990's most of them are anchored around the 1930's to the 1950's. Dower is eclectic in his choice of subjects, everything from wartime anti-regime graffiti as collated by the Japanese security services to reflections on prime minister Yoshida who oversaw the last years of the American occupation to the return of a good deal of sovereignty to the Japanese. This includes the friction between the Japanese and the U.S. over re-arming Japan, which the Japanese were not keen on and the U.S. (in the context of their Cold War aims) were. Interestingly these frictions surfaced well before the Korean War which I have heard cited as the reason for the turn around in U.S. policy vis-a-vis Japanese re-arming.
A number of myths are soundly scotched such as the Japanese propaganda assertion of the "hundred million hearts beating as one" which transferred to the U.S. as the assertion that the Japanese were all alike, robotic and unthinkingly servile. There is also an interesting comparative study of U.S. and Japanese wartime propaganda films, and another essay looks at the continuity and disruptions between wartime and post-war Japanese administrations and their economic policies. The most heart rending essay covers Japanese artistic responses to the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki which is accompanied by reproductions of the art that Dower discusses.
Dower is even handed throughout the book, he aims to explain and contextualise the subjects he is writing about without degenerating into a blame game. Indeed, there is an interesting piece on how the Japanese and Americans viewed each other during the 1980's and early 90's to the background of the Japanese economic "miracle". Obviously things have changed a bit since then, and this tension between the two countries has been eclipsed by Japans lack lustre economic performance since, and the post 9/11 obsessions of the U.S.
I have no problems recommending this book for those who wish to understand the Japanese, particularly with a view to World War 2 and the subsequent post war period.
I came to this book having already read John Dowers ground breaking and award winning "Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Aftermath of World War II", a book that I enjoyed immensely, and I wasn't disappointed in this earlier collection of essays.
The essays are well written and though they cover a period in time from the Meiji era (1868) to the early 1990's most of them are anchored around the 1930's to the 1950's. Dower is eclectic in his choice of subjects, everything from wartime anti-regime graffiti as collated by the Japanese security services to reflections on prime minister Yoshida who oversaw the last years of the American occupation to the return of a good deal of sovereignty to the Japanese. This includes the friction between the Japanese and the U.S. over re-arming Japan, which the Japanese were not keen on and the U.S. (in the context of their Cold War aims) were. Interestingly these frictions surfaced well before the Korean War which I have heard cited as the reason for the turn around in U.S. policy vis-a-vis Japanese re-arming.
A number of myths are soundly scotched such as the Japanese propaganda assertion of the "hundred million hearts beating as one" which transferred to the U.S. as the assertion that the Japanese were all alike, robotic and unthinkingly servile. There is also an interesting comparative study of U.S. and Japanese wartime propaganda films, and another essay looks at the continuity and disruptions between wartime and post-war Japanese administrations and their economic policies. The most heart rending essay covers Japanese artistic responses to the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki which is accompanied by reproductions of the art that Dower discusses.
Dower is even handed throughout the book, he aims to explain and contextualise the subjects he is writing about without degenerating into a blame game. Indeed, there is an interesting piece on how the Japanese and Americans viewed each other during the 1980's and early 90's to the background of the Japanese economic "miracle". Obviously things have changed a bit since then, and this tension between the two countries has been eclipsed by Japans lack lustre economic performance since, and the post 9/11 obsessions of the U.S.
I have no problems recommending this book for those who wish to understand the Japanese, particularly with a view to World War 2 and the subsequent post war period.
May 9, 2020
Really enjoyed these essays by John Dower. Two of the most eye-opening, must-read chapters are Chapter 7: Japanese Artists and the Atomic Bomb, and Chapter 8: Race, Language, and War in Two Cultures. Also, the Postscript: Two Reflections on the Death of the Shōwa Emperor should be enlightening for those who don't live in Japan and may not be aware of the different perceptions of the emperor. This is another fantastic book by someone who can take an unbiased look at political events and explain them in a way that fosters understanding of what constructs a national body politic, within Japan as well as abroad.
February 4, 2023
Yet another Dower classic. An enjoyable read and Dower’s range of vocabulary…
Slightly but insightful of the time.
Slightly but insightful of the time.
May 7, 2010
This is a really good book to read select essays with undergraduates, especially the one on perceptions of race across the Pacific. Dower makes a strong argument for constructing a transwar chronology for Japanese history (rather than an emphatic break at 1945) with the figure of Yoshida Shigeru.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews