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The best scholarship on the development of contemporary Japan
This collection presents well over 100 scholarly articles on modern Japanese society, written by leading scholars in the field. These selections have been drawn from the most distinguished scholarly journals as well as from journals that are less well known among specialists; and the articles represent the best and most important scholarship on their particular topic.
An understanding of the present through the lens of the past
The field of modern Japan studies has grown steadily as Westerners have recognized the importance of Japan as a lading world economic force and an emerging regional power. The post-1945 economic success of the Japanese has, however, been achieved in the context of that nation's history, social structure, educational enterprise and political environment. It is impossible to understand the postwar economic miracle without an appreciation of these elements. Japan's economic emergence has brought about and in some cases, exacerbated already existing tensions, and these tensions have, in turn, had a significant impact on Japanese economic life. The series is designed to give readers a basic understanding of modern Japan-its institutions and its people-as we stand on the threshold of a new century, often referred to as "the Pacific Century."
List of contents
Volume Introduction, Orientalism and the Study of Japan, The People in History: Recent Trends in Japanese Historiography, Toward a History of Twentieth-Century Japan, The Useful War, Japan's Delayed Surrender: A Reinterpretation, Understanding the Atomic Bomb and the Japanese Surrender: Missed Opportunities, Little-Known Near Disasters, and Modern Memory, The Mushroom Cloud and National Psyches: Japanese and American Perspectives of the A-Bomb Decision, 1945-1995, Reflections on the Occupation of Japan, American Democratization Policy for Occupied Japan: Correcting the Revisionist Version, A Rejoinder, The Japanese Constitution: Child of the Cold War, U.S. Policy in Post-War Japan: The Retreat from Liberalism, The Debate on Subjectivity in Postwar Japan: Foundations of Modernism as a Political Critique, Party Politics and the Japanese Labor Movement: Rengo's New Political Force, The Imperial Bureaucracy and Labor Policy in Postwar Japan, Japan: The End of One-Party Dominance, The Unraveling of Japan Inc.: Multinationals as Agents of Change, Japan's Non-Revolution, Japan's Diet Resolution on World War Two: Keeping History at Bay, A Journalist's Perspective on Postwar Japan, Acknowledgments
About the author
Edward R. Beauchamp
Summary
This is volume 1 of a six-volume study of the history of contemporary Japan. Written by leading academicians, 20 essays discuss the broad historical context in which to study Japan's postwar experience, the dynamics of the surrender decision, the Occupation's significance, the traditional and revis
