Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II | John W. Dower

Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II | John W. Dower | Best history of the post WWII period in Japan...

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Embracing Defeat: ...

	Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II John W. Dower, 1999 - 676 pages average customer review:based on 63 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A Precedent for Today

Dower describes the pathos of Japan's defeat and its difficult post-war journey to remake itself and its society - the backside of WWII in the Pacific. In the 1860's Emperor Meiji embarked upon a similar, but deliberate, journey. In this case, it was ignominiously thrust upon the Japanese. Dower uses a prodigious amount of detail and cultural insight. Deeply researched and well written, it's far ranging and often poignant as it captures the post-surrender chaos and struggles. It is also pragmatic and evenhanded.
The opening chapters are a tour of a defeated nation. The Japanese, a once proud people, were utterly crushed by the Allies. In the war's waning days they were clearly on their last legs, and like a boxer staggered by an overwhelming opponent, they were carrying on the fight by sheer will. "In this all-consuming milieu, the immediate meaning of 'liberation' for most Japanese was not political but psychological. Surrender...liberated them from death. Month after month, they had prepared for the worst; then, abruptly, the tension was broken. In an almost literal sense they were given back their lives. Shock bordering on stupefaction was a normal response to the emperor's announcement, usually followed quickly by an overwhelming sense of relief. But that sense of relief all too often proved ephemeral. Exhaustion and despair followed quickly in its train - a state of psychic collapse so deep and widespread that...[t]he populace, it was said, had succumbed to the 'kyodatsu condition.'" (88-89)
Our occupation was quintessentially American with a missionary zeal. "For all its uniqueness of time, place, and circumstance - all its peculiarly 'American' iconoclasm - the occupation was in this sense but a new manifestation of the old racial paternalism that historically accompanied the global expansion of the Western powers. Like their colonialist predecessors, the victors were imbued with a sense of manifest destiny. They spoke of being engaged in the mission of civilizing their subjects. They bore the burden (in their own eyes) of their race, creed, and culture. They swaggered, and were enviously free of self-doubt." (211-212). Dower includes a fascinating discussion of an interesting dilemma facing America: how to break away from the racist vilification of the Japanese by wartime propaganda and now show that the Japanese could measure up to sustaining a democratic form of government.
For the most part this book is exactly as the title states: how Japan embraced defeat. There is precious little directly about how the US administered Japan. It is not devoid of it, however. There is fascinating insight on how and why MacArthur used the Emperor's position during the war and during the Occupation (see chapter 7, especially 282-283 and 286). In the days immediately following surrender, "An alien from another planet...might easily have concluded that Emperor Hirohito had ascended the throne in August 1945 just in time to end a terrible war, and that no one's feelings other than his mattered" (287). Also, one gets a sense of the breadth and depth of the American occupation and the immensity of MacArthur from the discussion of SCAP's censorship policies.
The discussion about the Tokyo war crimes trials is also quite illuminating. "[The proceedings] called attention to the fact that the recent war in Asia had taken place not among free and independent nations, but rather on a map overwhelmingly demarcated by the colors of colonialism...The tribunal essentially resolved the contradiction between the world of colonialism and imperialism and the righteous ideals of crimes against peace and humanity by ignoring it. Japan's aggression was presented as a criminal act without provocation, without parallel, and almost entirely without context." (470-471). The trials did produce one star - the Indian Justice Rodhabinod Pal (one of only two Asians on the 11-justice Allied tribunal). He had harsh things to say about the way the Allies, and in particular the US, prosecuted the war (for example, "in the war in Asia the only act comparable to Nazi atrocities was perpetrated by the leaders of the United States" in their decision to use nuclear weapons (473-474) - events still pregnant with controversy). He also viewed as hypocritical the Allies' indignation over Japan's aggressive aggrandizement, as their militant expansion was characterized. While I disagree, clinging to my sense of Western values, I can see how those on the receiving end of the West's moral largesse could embrace his argument.
In the months preceding the war in Iraq members of the Bush Administration reportedly were reading this book for pointers. (The extended quote from Bonner F. Fellers on 282-283 could have been written in 2003 for Ba'athist Iraq rather than in 1944 for Imperial Japan.) There are parallels between the two conflicts, to be sure. An obvious similarity is the US's role in post-war Iraq. "From start to finish, the United States alone determined basic policy and exercised decisive command over all aspects of the occupation" (73). It will be the same in Iraq vis-à-vis the other Coalition powers, not to mention the UN. An obvious dissimilarity is the situation after hostilities ended. Total war left the Japan and the Japanese devastated. Iraq was the opposite. This is the first time in history, as far as I know, that an invading force toppled a regime with minimal death and destruction of the civilian populace and the nation's infrastructure.
In the end, this book promises hope. As we look towards an uncertain future with anti-Americanism growing and our War on Terror stretching in front of us indefinitely, we can draw hope from WWII-era Japan. Here was a nation with virulent militarism playing the cultural and race card. We destroyed them and they eventually became fast allies, even if born only of convenience. So it will be, hopefully, in Iraq; maybe (sans the hostilities) in dar al-Islam in general. We've done it before; and for all of our mistakes then and to come, we can do it again.

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Best history of the post WWII period in Japan...

Other reviewers have summarized this book's strengths and weaknesses. This book ranks with the best histories ever written in the 20th century. Great historiography, wonderfully fluid writing, compassionate views of the Japanese and Americans: all these add up to a great read.

A detailed account of occupied Japan.

Embracing Defeat is worthy of the praise and the awards it has received. The book is an in-depth look at the occupation of Japan by American forces between 1945 and 1952. While it is essentially an academic text (check out the citations at the back that seem to take up about a hundred pages and I`m still looking up some of the words in a dictionary), it reads well and is for the most part, an interesting account of a turbulent time in history.

The book is obviously well researched and has a good collection of photographs from the period scattered throughout. It been said before, but this book provides an excellent understanding of where today`s Japan comes from, and most foreigners who visit Japan or live here will probably find themselves connecting the dots between events during the occupation and certain cultural characteristics to be found here today.

There has been some criticism that the book is Japan-centric and that Dower takes a stance against the Americans. Would it be too cynical to entertain the possibility that this impression comes from the fact that Dower uses the terms `The Americans` and `The Japanese`, instead of `us` and `them`. I`m not sure where this criticism could come from otherwise.

As is the consensus it would seem, Embracing Defeat is a valuable resource for anyone interested in Japan, both past and present. And at 550 pages of detailed commentary, you`ll learn a lot from it.

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Illuminating Yet Imperfect

.... Japan eagerly turned their backs on the failed militarism of the 1931-1945 epoch and gladly accepted the New Deal democratic values of the American bureaucracy and military which would rule them until 1952. ... General MacArthur prevented the more radical elements of Japanese society from running the new, democratic Japan. It was to be an ordered democracy, with a retained emperor who would symbolize the new, democratic, peaceful Japanese nation. American New Dealers would win some reforms- rural land reform, the encouragement of strong unions, the abolishment of the aristocratic upper house of the Japanese legislature, the severe curtailment of large industrial combines. Yet essentially conservative Japanese politicians would run the reformed Japan, as prodded along by General MacArthur. Professor Dower's portrayal of post-surrender Japan is ordered in an odd way. Japan's economic revival is not really discussed until book's end yet this aspect of post-war Japan is most relevant to most of the world outside Japan. Much of the book discusses the explosion of Japanese newspapers, magazines, books and other periodicals in the post-war era. The struggle for day-to-day survival is documented mostly by several interesting personal glimpses into the lives of average Japanese. Fascinating to the American mind is how wretchedly Japanese veterans were treated by the populace at large when they returned home in the late forties. In America's Civil War, southern soldiers were treated as heroes by their fellow southerners. In contrast, Japanese veterans were treated as shamed losers. Also interesting is the pragmatic way in which the Japanese government recruited prostitutes and other women to service the American troops just prior to American occupation. One last final fascinating note is how little interaction Douglas MacArthur had with the Japanese nation and people. Douglas MacArthur essentially ruled Japan from September, 1945 until the Korean War began in the summer of 1950 yet never really felt a need to know the Japanese people. Such detachment is mind-boggling.

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Democracy from Above and other histories

'Embracing Defeat' is a Pulitzer prize winning portrait of Japanese society after the defeat in WW2. It is a wide ranging survey, which, despite some guiding themes, often feels more like a collection of essays than a unified work.

There are, I think, several questions of great interest to the contemporary reader about Japan. One would probably be most interested in learning about how Japan dealt with the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; how Japan turned from a racist, imperialist country into a democratic and pacifistic one; and how Japan not only recovered from the economic devastation of the war, but finally became one of the world's leading powers.

Strangely, Professor Dower seem to give peripheral attention at best to the first and third question, and pays most attention to the second, as well as to minuet study of the interactions between the US occupation force and the Japanese population. He also focuses mostly on the early years of the occupation, up to 1949 or so, as if a chapter or two on the outbreak of the cold war were planned but later discarded.

Much of the book is 'social history' - a depiction not so much of the leading characters and figures, but of sociological and economic trends. All too often, Dower fall into the trap of this kind of writing - describing things that, for any observer with the slightest knowledge of the society, would be patently obvious. Who could fail to anticipate poverty and corruption in a country devastated by war? Given the existence of rationing, every one who ever took any economic course can predict the appearance of a black market. And obviously, a country that lost millions of its young population in war would pay more attention to its own casualties than to those of the former enemies.

One of the great advantages of social history is that it lends itself to quantitative, statistical analysis. Surprisingly, Dower hardly ever mentions public polls, and rarely attempts to quantify his observations about opinions as expressed in media articles. His use of economic statistics is only somewhat better. There is an old historian's maxim which goes "don't guess, try to count, and if you can't count, admit that you're guessing". Unfortunately, Dower fails to conform. I think that his analysis is robbed of much of its power because of this.

The central theme of the book is the paradoxes of 'Democracy from Above' - the US enforced an authoritarian rule to make people free. It is' of course an interesting paradox, but Dower's exploration of it is only as good as the specific topics in which he engages.

By far the best part of the book deals with American 'wedge strategy', the attempt to distinguish between the Emperor and the military government headed by Tojo. Most of part 4, dealing with the wedge strategy and the formation of the Japanese constitution are nothing short of breathtaking, as they explore the intrigue and politics of occupied Japan, and of Japan vis a vis the United States and the world. The image of McArthur, strangely aloof from Japanese culture, and yet also admired and dedicated for change, is an intriguing and well realized one.

Also interesting is Dower's report on (and especially criticism of) the War Crime trials. Although I was left unconvinced that the Japanese would have done a better job judging the war criminals themselves, it is a powerful demonstration of the great problematic nature of international law, which is in essence, as Dower calls it, Victor's Justice.

Ultimately, though, it is hard to see a clear plan in the book, and Dower's afterward, in which he attempts to pull everything together, feels shallow (but interesting). In it he for the first time engages fully the economic leap forward Japan took in the 1960s. Dower argues that the key to Japan's industrialization lies in the '15 years war', starting with the commencement of hostilities with China in 1931. Japan in the second half of the twentieth century, having renounced its militarism, came to excel in the other field open to it - economics.

For people who, like me, are trying to understand how Japan became the leading economic power it is today and how other countries could learn from its example. Dower's book supplies no answer. Its failures of narrative prevent it, in my opinion, from reaching the status of a classic. Yet for all its faults, Embracing Defeat is an interesting, informative and readable study of Japan after the war.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, page 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

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