'Embracing Defeat' breaks down remorse and resistance in postwar Japan

"Embracing Defeat," the title of John Dower's landmark study of how Japan reformed and rebuilt during the U.S. Occupation, raises an interesting question: What about remorse and responsibility? It's a timely question as 2015 is the 70th anniversary of the end of a war that continues to divide East Asia.

Dower's remarkable and penetrating analysis of the Occupation makes great use of documentary evidence. He references best-selling postwar English conversation books, which explained how Japanese should meet and greet their conquerors: "Thank you! Thank you, awfully! How do you do?" Dower reveals heartfelt and bitter letters written to newspapers, postwar pop songs made in a time of desperation, and even takes us inside the cabaret shows where girls posed half-naked to recreate famous Western artworks, and be admired by American servicemen.

As Dower shows, the postwar period was a time of great change and also severe censorship — especially in relation to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But as for "collective repentance," a letter writer states, "If collective repentance of the hundred million means those in charge of the war are trying to distribute responsibility among the people, then it's sneaky."

Perhaps what Dower's Pulitzer Prize-winning book reveals is that defeat can be collectively embraced, but that responsibility, remorse and repentance are much harder to navigate.

Read archived reviews of Japanese classics at jtimes.jp/essential.