Those who write about history do so at their peril. The difficulties are manifest: how to contribute anything meaningful, to be divergent but remain credible and to research the past without losing sight of the present.
Academic accounts are apt to view history as a yellowing bone fragment, a conveniently inanimate object that can be passed around for inspection, then returned to its glass case. R. Taggart Murphy, the author of "Japan and the Shackles of the Past," is an academic himself (a professor at the University of Tsukuba), but writes with flair and an ear for style — qualities often absent in such circles. The author's view that Japan remains a prisoner of its past is hardly new, but his contention that it is complicit in its own incarceration puts a rather different spin on the subject.