Postwar Japan--the Asian Phoenix. Review on Embracing Defeat : Japan In The Wake Of World War II - John Dower

Japan In The Wake Of World War II - This is the beginning of one of the great post-War rags-to-riches stories.

In losing its gamble for Asian hegemomy, Japan had also lost an entire generation. Germany launched the European war with its attack on Poland in 1939. America's war began in December 1941. Japan's war began fully ten years earlier, with its takeover of Manchuria.

Fourteen years of war, ending with the comprehensive destruction of a dozen major cities, would have exhausted any nation. It utterly drained and devastated the nascent modern economy of Japan. Nevertheless, a mere forty years later, many Americans again identified Japan as the enemy, because of its seeming economic invincibility.

This transformation from prostrate supplicant to economic superpower occurred without the assistance of a Marshall Plan; Japan was not a focus of America's Cold War strategies until the outbreak of the Korean War. Nevertheless, American policies laid much of the foundation for this resurgence during its six year occupation. Embracing Defeat tells this story in vivid detail.

This is a long, systematic, and seemingly definitive treatment of the occupation period. It includes extended discussions of Japan's reaction to the surrender announcement, the plight of returning soldiers, starvation, corruption, the ''rehabilitation'' and humanizing of the Emperor, MacArthur, the creation of a new constitution and the emergence of democracy, the war crimes trials, the sexual servicing of American servicemen (not a topic that the Japanese left to chance), censorship, the emergence of a Westernized culture, and the groundwork for Japan's economic recovery. Dower is not much given to judgments on any of these topics, but the reader has ample material for forming independent conclusions.

The dominant American role in this process is naturally interesting to American readers. The overall impression Dower conveys is a curious admixture of arrogance, idealism, and realpolitik. The creation of the constitution is an apt illustration. Dissatisfied with the Japanese government's own progress toward reforming the Charter of the Meiji Restoration, the Americans, on MacArthur's orders, simply scrapped the document, wrote an entirely new constitution for Japan, and presented it to the political leaders as a fait accompli for them to rubber stamp, all in ONE WEEK.

Yet, the document itself was not based on the American Constitution, as might have been predicted. And it has gained enormous support and almost reverence in Japan, resisting all attempts at significant revision.

Embracing Defeat is a narrative history. For his research, Dower relies primarily on the stuff of everyday life--newspaper clippings; children's games and ditties; diaries; letters; photographs; popular songs, stories, books, and movies; and interviews with survivors. This was obviously a monumental undertaking, likely made possible only by Dower's Japanese wife and periodic residences in Japan. The result is impressive not only as scholarship but also as storytelling, conveying a better sense of daily life than any number of official statistics. It seems a worthy recipient of the National Book Award. Based on this work, Dower belongs in an elite class--with Paul Johnson, Barbara Tuchman, and Daniel Boorstin--of serious historians who can engage non-historian readers.

I highly recommend this book in my rating, but only for a limited audience. Reading it is not a chore, but it is an undertaking. Only those with an interest in Japan, World War II, or the post-War period will likely find it suitable. For other readers, it is probably more than they want to know on the subject.

This book is a sequel of sorts to Dower's War Without Mercy, a story of the war in the Pacific, which also received much critical acclaim.