This is a succinct and reliable introductory survey of post-World War II Japanese history. This third edition is substantially rewritten and updated by the inclusion of recent material and analysis. The latter portions of the book are in fact entirely new and, reflecting the differences in Japan in 1985 and 1999, this edition is far more pessimistic in tone.
The original conclusion -- "Japan has won its way back and more" -- stands in stark contrast to Roger Buckley's current admonition: "Yet both the Japanese state and its people must avoid the great illusion of imagining that past achievements and present benign international realities will automatically continue uncontested in the future. Decline should not be seen as merely the fate of others. It can happen here."
The author's shift from praising the extraordinary achievements of postwar Japan to an examination of the malaise of contemporary Japan fits the current somber mood here about the nation's bleak prospects. His pessimism is fueled by a sense that the urgent problems facing Japan are not being addressed effectively and are thus festering to the point of intractability. It is the persistence of the attitudes, patterns and practices of the past that are barriers to overdue reforms. Future historians will probably shake their collective heads in disbelief at the policy paralysis that gripped fin-de-siecle Japan, transforming a recession into a catastrophe with global ramifications.