Embracing Defeat

Drawing on a vast range of sources, from manga comics to MacArthur's report to Congress, this monumental new work by America's foremost historian of modern Japan traces the impact of defeat and reconstruction on every aspect of Japan's national life. Alongside the familiar story of economic resurgence, Dower examines how the nation as a whole reacted to the contradictory experiences of humiliation at the hands of a foreign power and liberation from the demands of a suicidal nationalism. The result is a titanic history, and a landmark book.

Drawing on a vast range of sources, from manga comics to MacArthur's report to Congress, this monumental new work by America's foremost historian of modern Japan traces the impact of defeat and reconstruction on every aspect of Japan's national life. Alongside the familiar story of economic resurgence, Dower examines how the nation as a whole reacted to the contradictory experiences of humiliation at the hands of a foreign power and liberation from the demands of a suicidal nationalism. The result is a titanic history, and a landmark book.

Drawing on a vast range of Japanese sources and illustrated with dozens of astonishing documentary photographs, Embracing Defeat is the fullest and most important history of the more than six years of American occupation, which affected every level of Japanese society, often in ways neither side could anticipate. Dower, whom Stephen E. Ambrose has called "America's foremost historian of the Second World War in the Pacific," gives us the rich and turbulent interplay between West and East, the victor and the vanquished, in a way never before attempted, from top-level manipulations concerning the fate of Emperor Hirohito to the hopes and fears of men and women in every walk of life. Already regarded as the benchmark in its field, Embracing Defeat is a work of colossal scholarship and history of the very first order.

Drawing on a vast range of Japanese sources and illustrated with dozens of astonishing documentary photographs, Embracing Defeat is the fullest and most important history of the more than six years of American occupation, which affected every level of Japanese society, often in ways neither side could anticipate. Dower, whom Stephen E. Ambrose has called "America's foremost historian of the Second World War in the Pacific," gives us the rich and turbulent interplay between West and East, the victor and the vanquished, in a way never before attempted, from top-level manipulations concerning the fate of Emperor Hirohito to the hopes and fears of men and women in every walk of life. Already regarded as the benchmark in its field, Embracing Defeat is a work of colossal scholarship and history of the very first order.