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    Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering: Japan in the Modern World

    Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering: Japan in the Modern World

    by John W. Dower

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      ISBN-13: 9781595588111
    • Publisher: New Press, The
    • Publication date: 07/31/2012
    • Sold by: Barnes & Noble
    • Format: eBook
    • Pages: 336
    • Sales rank: 323,439
    • File size: 7 MB

    John W. Dower is Professor Emeritus of History at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His interests lie in modern Japanese history and U.S.-Japan relations. He is the author of several books, including War Without Mercy and Embracing Defeat, which was the recipient of numerous honors, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Bancroft Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History, and the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Prize. He lives in Boston.

    Table of Contents

    Preface vii

    1 E.H. Norman, Japan, and the Uses of History 1

    2 Race, Language, and War in Two Cultures: World War II in Asia 28

    3 Japan's Beautiful Modern War 65

    4 "An Aptitude for Being Unloved?": War and Memory in Japan 105

    5 The Bombed: Hiroshimas and Nagasakis in Japanese Memory 136

    6 A Doctor's Diary of Hiroshima, Fifty Years Later 161

    7 How a Genuine Democracy Should Celebrate Its Past 176

    8 Peace and Democracy in Two Systems: External Policy and Internal Conflict 185

    9 Mocking Misery: Grassroots Satire in Defeated Japan 227

    10 Lessons from Japan About War's Aftermath 256

    11 The Other Japanese Occupation 261

    Sources 270

    Notes 272

    Index 307

    What People are Saying About This

    From the Publisher

    "Scrupulously researched and bravely presented scholarship."
    —Publishers Weekly

    "No historian writes with more authority than this leading U.S. historian of modern Japan. . . . A set of serious, cautionary reflections from a superb historian."
    —Kirkus

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    “A series of astute academic essays on the forging of postwar Japan” from the winner of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and Bancroft Prize (Kirkus Reviews).
     
    Remembering and reconstructing the past inevitably involves forgetting—and nowhere more so than in the complex relationship between the United States and Japan since the end of World War II. In this provocative and probing series of essays, John W. Dower—one of our leading historians of postwar Japan and author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Embracing Defeat—explores the uses and abuses to which this history has been subjected and, with deliberation and insight, affirms the urgent need for scholars to ask the questions that are not being asked.
     
    Using E. H. Norman, the unjustly neglected historian of prewar Japan, as a starting point, Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering sets out both to challenge historiographical orthodoxy and reveal the configurations of power inherent in scholarly and popular discourse in Japan and America. It is a profound look at American and Japanese perceptions—past and present—of key moments in their shared history. An incisive investigation of the problems of public history and its role in a modern democracy, these essays are essential reading for anyone interested in postwar US-Japan relations, as well as the broader discipline of history.
     
    “A set of serious, cautionary reflections from a superb historian.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

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    Publishers Weekly
    No historian writes with more authority than this leading U.S. historian of modern Japan. MIT professor Dower’s new work brings together a number of his essays written between 1993 and 2007 (only one earlier), and they show him at the top of his form. Most deal with Japan since WWII, although Dower (a Pulitzer winner for Embracing Defeat) invokes much earlier history. He’s at his best, and unabashedly critical, when analyzing national hypocrisy and the misuses of history and memory, American as well as Japanese. His topics include Japanese racism along with the enthusiasm with which Japan went to war. He shows, through analyses of such cultural products as comics, playing cards, art, and clothing, how the Japanese themselves could ridicule as well as praise their leaders even in the midst of warfare’s horrors and atomic catastrophe. Searing essays on Hiroshima round out the volume. Dower also tries to apply his knowledge to current policy issues, especially American ease in going to war. On slippery ground here, he walks it as deftly as anyone else. A set of serious, cautionary reflections from a superb historian. Illus. Agent: Georges Borchardt. (Aug.)
    From the Publisher
    Praise for Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering
    :

    "No historian writes with more authority than this leading historian
    • f modern Japan. Dower’s new work . . . shows him at the
    top of his form."
    —Publishers Weekly

    "Scrupulously researched and bravely presented scholarship."
    —Kirkus Reviews

    Praise for Embracing Defeat
    :

    "A superb history of Japan’s occupation."
    —The New York Review of Books

    "A magisterial and beautifully written book. . . . A pleasure to read."
    —The New York Times Book Review

    Kirkus Reviews
    A series of astute academic essays on the forging of postwar Japan. The winner of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award and Bancroft Prize, Dower (History Emeritus/MIT; Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor / Hiroshima / 9-11 / Iraq, 2010, etc.) is comfortable going against the grain. He was key to bringing back into print the significant work of forgotten Canadian historian E.H. Norman, whose deep research into the Meiji state revealed the authoritarian, feudal legacies that later helped drag Japan into imperial militarism, misery and defeat. In his essay on Norman, Dower shows how this approach contrasted with the postwar modernization theorists then in vogue, who held that Japan's militarism was essentially an aberration and hoped to put a positive spin on accomplishments since the Meiji era. Dower was told in 1970, during his time as a student, that his interest in the postwar occupation of Japan was "too recent to be history," foreshadowing some of the obfuscation he would later encounter. Other essays here, which appeared between 1993 and 2000, are fascinating explorations into Japanese racial theories, intense militaristic and racial propaganda, pervasive sense of "victim consciousness" and eruptions of reactionary language and a faulty sense of responsibility. "The Bombed" is a riveting analysis of the effects of the atomic bombs on the Japanese psyche. Thanks to the collusion of the U.S. government, which aimed for an easy occupation of the country, the Japanese were censored from venting expressions of outrage and grief over their government's rampant militarism and the end-of-war atomic apocalypse. Dower explores the dual role of science as both destroyer and postwar miracle worker, a lesson to be gleaned by both America and postwar Japan in terms of economic growth and military technology. Scrupulously researched and bravely presented scholarship.

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