Embracing Defeat (Hardcover)

And while there are clear and material differences between the basic environments and nature of the occupations, there are some striking lessons learned in the 7 year slog led by McCarthur, and promoted by "radical-idealogues" in the US gov't who maintained a belief Japan could sever its centuries old embrace of Imperialism in favor of Capitalism and Democracy(despite material dissent among many in the War Department and Congress who scoffed at the notion that the Allies, as conquerors, could democratize such a ravaged nation of Imperialist subservients).

The most interesting takeaway for me was the ingenious use of Hirohito as a proxy to the "hearts and minds" of the Japanese people. The US wisely leveraged the extraordinary (cult-like) capital in servitude that the Emperor had built up in the war ravaged empire. Using what was dubbed the "Wedge Strategy" the US seperated the Emperor from the rest of the Japanese Imperial Government, attributing blame for all the evils of the empire that caused devastation and failure to "the Government that betrayed the Emperor, and the people of Japan". The US then proceeded to use the Emperor as a proxy to the public; asserting his preserved authority to conform the Japanese to the basic charter of the Potsdam Declaration and, more significantly, to McCarther (as "Supreme Commander"; jeez, that was actually his title, imagine if Bremer was assigned such a title, times have certainly changed).

From a detailed accounting of the extraordinary devastation to Japan (their economy, their population, their identities), through the mechanics of the occupation, the writing of a constitution (both literally and philosophically) and through the final stages of engineering, this book (at over 500 pages) is chock full of fascinating understandings of one of the greatest undertakings in history; the reconstitution and habilitation of a defeated nation by the nation that defeated it.

This is a fascinating read that is well organized. That it's well organized is worth noting, for as long a read as it is, the casual reader can (from the Table of Contents) skip around the book, read certain chapters of interest, and never feel lost.

I hope this was helpful.

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.