Reviews

• 真実に肉薄

  1945年の終戦から1951年のサンフランシスコ平和条約締結までの出来事を中心として記述されている。東京裁判などとかく意見の分かれるテーマについても深堀りされており、なかなか読み応えがあった。特定の主義主張を堅持しているような方々が読むと機嫌を損ねそうな箇所もあるが、純粋に戦後の復興期について知りたい方々にとってはすばらしい書籍である。 著者はアメリカの歴史学者なのだが、とくに偏っているという印象はなかった。全章を通じて偏頗なく正確に書かれており、ピューリッツァー賞を受賞したのも頷ける質の高さである。終戦期のことは閣僚の靖国神社参拝などでいまだに折に触れ話題になるが、ナショナリティーを問わずこういった本をより多くの人に読んでもらいたい。断片的な情報に基づいて議論するのは不毛なのがわかるはずだ。 これまで散々に語り尽くされたテーマではあるのだが、かなり粒度が高いため始めて知る内容も多かったように思う。とくに憲法制定に関わる部分の描写は興味深かった。当時米軍に占領されていたわけだから、その強い影響下で行われたことは紛れもない事実なのだが、海の向こうで決められたものが一方的に押し付けられたというわけではない。民主的なプロセスであったとは言い難いが、活発な議論と駆け引きの結果として生まれたものであるのは確かなようだ。 最近は憲法改正なども話題になっているが、歴史認識に絡む諸問題は戦後70年以上経ってもまだ続いている。選挙結果を左右し、外交関係を揺るがせているのを見ていると、問題の根深さを感じざるを得ない。一朝一夕に解決するようなものではないし、むしろこの先ずっとついて回るのかもしれないが、せっかくならちゃんと理解したうえで話をしたいものである。読んで損はしない。

• 確かに力作だろうが

  虚脱をメインテーマに、戦前戦後の統治者に翻弄させる日本国民を、精神論、文化論、はたまた風俗にまで踏み込んだ、正に占領軍と髣髴とさせる圧倒的なボリュームで読者に迫ります。マッカーサーの日本人12歳以下論の真相や、マッカーサーの本意とは別に伏線としての日本人の精神論と、なかなか構成も良く考えられています。ただ、人文学的な定説が、果たして客観性のあるものなのかが、常に頭に引っかかります。日本人のマッカーサーに対する神のごとき仰ぎかた、なんぞは果たして客観的な事実なのか、理系の人間には溜息が出る箇所も散見します。各章が時代的に行ったり来たりしてますが、テーマごとの章なので、ある意味効果的ですが、読んでいるうちに混乱することもあるかもしれません。

• Amazing

  I wish everyone living in Japan would read this. It helps understand so many things.

• excellent

  excellent

• 申し分なしです。

  Delivery, 商品内容申し分なしです。

• 戦勝国史観

  戦勝国側の立場から記載されているため、 日本から見ると それお前らの都合ででっち上げられた話だろう ってこともちらほら有りますが、 あっちが分からみた真実 がどうなのか は知ることができます

• 日本人が今一番聞きたいこと

  去年の全米図書賞ノンフィクション部門を受賞したダウアー教授のこの本は、これまで何冊となく書かれてきた日本の戦後史だが、10年近いリサーチから見え隠れするのは役人や政治家ではなく、市井の人々がいかに敗戦から立ち直っていったか、という部分。日本人って、こんなにクリエイティブで多様性があってしたたかだったんんだー、という新しい発見。それは長引く不況の中で喘ぐ我々一般市民に捧げられたエールのようにも思える。「君たちはあの玉音放送を聞いた時のどん底からこんなにもたくましく這い上がってきたじゃないか。大丈夫、また頑張れるよ」と。

• 良い本です

  梱包丁寧でした。ありがとうございました！ アメリカ人の視点からみた前後の日本はとても興味深かったです。

• Os livros é excelente! Elogio o cumprimento do cronograma de entrega, e o estado em que o produto foi recebido, impecável. Parabéns

• As a resident of Japan over the past 12 years, I have been meaning to read this book for a long time and I am delighted I finally got around to it. Over the years there have been many aspects of Japanese ideas and opinions on this most sensitive of subjects which I didn`t understand. Many of these issues remain current to this day. All of my questions and many more are comprehensively answered by Mr Dower`s painstaking and thoroughly researched work. I knew the US influence on post-war Japan was strong, but quite how strong, pervasive and longlasting (for good and ill) is staggering. Mr Dower has written a gripping and human account of a tumultous period of history.

• Book Review: Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. By John W. Dower. (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, Ltd, 1999. Pp 676. ISBN 0-393-04686-9) Embracing Defeat begins where the Pacific War ends. It is a detailed examination of Japan in the aftermath of the war. John W. Dower adroitly leads the reader through the arc of this history as Japan literally rises from ashes at war’s end on August 15, 1945, and then guides us through the US Occupation period and beyond. Rather than a simple chronology, Dower organized his book into sections and topics that focus on the Japanese people, their sufferings, the rationalization of their defeat, and their adjustment to a “New Japan.” Dower’s organization provides the reader insight and sensitivity to the range of difficulties faced by a country devastated by war and left with unimaginable challenges to reconstruct a livable country. Clearly, Dower mastered his subject. The depth of the Japanese plight is borne out in sections with titles like “Shattered Lives,” “Displaced Persons,” “Stigmatized Victims,” and “Mocking Defeat.” Japan, a country that was an industrial power in the 1920s, had become a “fourth-rate nation” by war’s end. (44) And while the allies’ story may be explained in the word victory, Dower digs deep in his account of the diverse opinions, emotions, actions, and motivations held by the Japanese people, brought about by the word defeat. A further example of Dower’s organization is that, although General MacArthur’s name is frequently cited, he is almost never the central figure in the narrative. The view is clearly from and about the Japanese. Perhaps the most enlightening sections of Dower’s work are the first few chapters which focus on the conflicted Japanese people. Japanese culture worshipped the Emperor as Deity, in a way comparable to the worship of Jesus Christ to the Christians. To die for the Emperor was deemed an honor to many. The abrupt end to the war and the devastating defeat was literally and figuratively a bombshell which was universally felt by the Japanese people. When Emperor Hirohito broadcast via radio that the war was over, that the war had been in vain, that Japan had been defeated, it was the first time nearly anyone in Japan had heard his voice. Dower tells us that at the time of Emperor Hirohito’s radio broadcast on August 15, approximately 9.0 million people in Japan were homeless and that “approximately 6.5 million Japanese were stranded in Asia, Siberia, and the Pacific Ocean area.” (47, 48) Although Dower tells us that repatriation was “an impressive accomplishment,” many Japanese returned to a country they hardly recognized. “Many adults who returned after years abroad found that their families had been shattered. Urban neighborhoods had been obliterated.” (57) Many never returned. Returning soldiers were often stigmatized victims, according to the author. Many who had been sent off to war with victory parties and chants of “100 million hearts beating as one,” were frequently viewed as pathetic outcasts. In some respects they had let the Emperor down. Onlookers dubbed their military uniforms as “defeat suits,” their shoes as “defeat shoes.” (170) Outcasts represented a large part of the population and included not only veterans, but the homeless, the hungry. Daily living was as hard as imaginable for the impoverished postwar survivors who received little sympathy. Dower characterizes Japanese culture as a harsh environment for outcasts. He states: “There existed no strong tradition of responsibility toward strangers, or of unrequited philanthropy, or of tolerance or even genuine sympathy…toward those who suffered misfortune.” (61) The US Occupation began in late August and the formal surrender took place aboard the USS Missouri on September 2, 1945. General MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces (“SCAP”) was given unprecedented authority to bring order to chaos. “SCAP’s mission was nothing less than to carry out the demilitarization and democratization of Japan.” (77) While millions of Japanese were homeless and starving, initial SCAP orders seemed insensitive. They were “not [to] assume any responsibility for the economic rehabilitation of Japan or the strengthening of the Japanese economy….The plight of Japan is the direct outcome of its own behavior.” (529) Almost from the beginning though, this order began to soften; it would change dramatically over time. Dower shows us that over the six-year and eight-month US Occupation, the world changed; thus as new conflicts emerged, the relationship between the United States and her allies changed. These unforeseen changes altered the US-Japanese relationship during the occupation well beyond what could have been imagined in 1945. Amidst the human misery that was so visible in Japan in 1945 and 1946, SCAP proceeded with what must be considered a radical agenda for a victorious occupying power—the implementation of democracy and the development of a new Japanese constitution. “The Americans had long looked askance at the Meiji charter, deeming it incompatible with the healthy development of responsible democratic government.” This made the existing charter incompatible with the primary goals of the United States, its allies, and SCAP. (346) Initially, SCAP endeavored to work through an array of influential Japanese to revise the existing charter or encourage development of a constitution that would be consistent with liberal and democratic ideals required by SCAP and the Potsdam Proclamation. Dower discusses in great detail several unsuccessful Japanese attempts toward this end. The author cites that SCAP’s authority to impose a new constitution on Japan could be rationalized by its authority under Section 6 of the Potsdam Declaration, which stated, “There must be elimination for all time the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest.” Dower intimates that this was interpreted as requiring the establishment of constitutional protections against future abuses of authority. (347) Dower also cites Sections 10 and 12 as other sections of the Potsdam Declaration that supported SCAP’s involvement in the establishment of a new constitution. After several months and seemingly frustrated, MacArthur and his top aides in Government Section [of SCAP] concluded that “the [Japanese] government was incapable of proposing revisions that would meet the Potsdam requirements.” (360) In February 1946 MacArthur ordered that Government Section draft a new constitution for Japan. This bold act, characteristically MacArthur, was an unprecedented act by an occupying power. Produced in secret in order to devise a way to give it Japanese authorship, this draft, with relatively minor changes, ultimately became the new Japanese constitution in May 1947. It was by all accounts an exceptionally liberal constitution which included reforms such as female suffrage, agrarian reform, and a highly controversial “Article 9” which denunciated war. Dower demonstrates in many ways how the relationship between the vanquished Japanese and the allies represented by SCAP began to shift over time. The most notable of several examples was caused by the emerging Cold War. Initially, SCAP sought to foster reconstruction of Japan on a lesser economic scale and Section 9 forced demilitarization. But as Dower explains, “Driven by Cold War considerations, the Americans began to jettison many of the original ideals of ‘demilitarization and democratization’ that had seemed so unexpected and inspiring to a defeated populace in 1945.” (525) Instead of breaking up big business and prosecuting prominent capitalists and bureaucrats, as Cold War fever mounted, Americans sought to reinvigorate the economy with Japan ultimately viewed as a first line “bulwark against communism.” In the vernacular of the times, this dramatic change was referred to as the “reverse course.” When the Korean War erupted on June 25, 1950, Japan and its US Occupation forces were nothing less than an asset against communist aggression. Moreover, the period leading up to the war saw the revitalization of key heavy industrial expansion in Japan which proved a boon to her economy. Dower tells us that during the Korean War period, American “special procurements” from Japan amounted to billions of US dollars in Japanese exports. These purchases continued for years after the end to the Korean War. Dower states: “This prolonged windfall enabled Japan to increase its imports greatly and virtually double its scale of production in key industries.” (542) Embracing Defeat is a most important contribution to modern Japanese history. On one hand it can be viewed as a capstone to Pacific War history for it does provide an insightful epilogue to the war. In another sense this work provides a genesis to the Japanese Miracle because it ends just as Japan, Inc. is acquiring its economic footing. Dower’s ability to aptly organize his abundant scholarship into very readable prose is also noteworthy. The book belongs on the shelf of any serious student of Japan, or for that matter, any serious student of twentieth-century history.

• Interesting book and history with many lessons to learn on how a country can recover from torn-war defeat and total destruction.

• Es un trabajo serio y riguroso sobre la manera en que se procesó la derrota en Japón. Muy bueno su reconstrucción del período de ocupación norteamericana y la construcción del Japón democrático

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