Author: Akira Iriye Publisher: University Press of Kentucky ISBN: 081318312X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 357
Book Description
A major phenomenon in the post-World War II world is the rise of Japan as a leading international economic and industrial power. This advance began with American aid in rebuilding the nation after the war, but it has now seen Japan rival and even outstrip the United States on several fronts. The relations between the two powers and the impact that they have on economic and political factors during the postwar years are the focus of this important book. The editors, Akira Iriye and Warren I. Cohen, themselves noted authorities on Asian affairs, have gathered here contributions from a distinguished group of American and Japanese scholars. The resulting collection represents a unique blend of viewpoints from each side of the American-Japanese relationship.
Author: Yoshikuni Igarashi Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 1400842980 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 295
Book Description
Japan and the United States became close political allies so quickly after the end of World War II, that it seemed as though the two countries had easily forgotten the war they had fought. Here Yoshikuni Igarashi offers a provocative look at how Japanese postwar society struggled to understand its war loss and the resulting national trauma, even as forces within the society sought to suppress these memories. Igarashi argues that Japan's nationhood survived the war's destruction in part through a popular culture that expressed memories of loss and devastation more readily than political discourse ever could. He shows how the desire to represent the past motivated Japan's cultural productions in the first twenty-five years of the postwar period. Japanese war experiences were often described through narrative devices that downplayed the war's disruptive effects on Japan's history. Rather than treat these narratives as obstacles to historical inquiry, Igarashi reads them along with counter-narratives that attempted to register the original impact of the war. He traces the tensions between remembering and forgetting by focusing on the body as the central site for Japan's production of the past. This approach leads to fascinating discussions of such diverse topics as the use of the atomic bomb, hygiene policies under the U.S. occupation, the monstrous body of Godzilla, the first Western professional wrestling matches in Japan, the transformation of Tokyo and the athletic body for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, and the writer Yukio Mishima's dramatic suicide, while providing a fresh critical perspective on the war legacy of Japan.
Author: Aaron Forsberg Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press ISBN: 0807860662 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 353
Book Description
In this book, Aaron Forsberg presents an arresting account of Japan's postwar economic resurgence in a world polarized by the Cold War. His fresh interpretation highlights the many connections between Japan's economic revival and changes that occurred in the wider world during the 1950s. Drawing on a wealth of recently released American, British, and Japanese archival records, Forsberg demonstrates that American Cold War strategy and the U.S. commitment to liberal trade played a central role in promoting Japanese economic welfare and in forging the economic relationship between Japan and the United States. The price of economic opportunity and interdependence, however, was a strong undercurrent of mutual frustration, as patterns of conflict and compromise over trade, investment, and relations with China continued to characterize the postwar U.S.-Japanese relationship. Forsberg's emphasis on the dynamic interaction of Cold War strategy, the business environment, and Japanese development challenges "revisionist" interpretations of Japan's success. In exploring the complex origins of the U.S.-led international economy that has outlasted the Cold War, Forsberg refutes the claim that the U.S. government sacrificed American commercial interests in favor of its military partnership with Japan.
Author: Jennifer M. Miller Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674240022 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 368
Book Description
During the occupation American policymakers identified elections and education as the wellsprings of a democratic consciousness in Japan. But as the extent of Japan’s economic recovery became clear, they placed prosperity at the core of a revised vision for their new ally’s future, as Jennifer Miller shows in this fresh appraisal of the Cold War.
Author: Kenneth B. Pyle Publisher: ISBN: Category : Education Languages : en Pages : 342
Book Description
Analyzing the dynamics of historical change, the text discusses the major forces in Japan's development from 1600 to the present day, including samurai officialdom, industrialization, militarism, and social values.
Author: Andrew Gordon Publisher: Univ of California Press ISBN: 9780520074750 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 514
Book Description
As they examine three related themes of postwar history, the authors describe an ongoing historical process marked by unexpected changes, such as Japan's extraordinary economic growth, and unanticipated continuities, such as the endurance of conservative rule. --From publisher's description.
Author: Melvyn P. Leffler Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 0521837197 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 663
Book Description
This volume examines the origins and early years of the Cold War in the first comprehensive historical reexamination of the period. A team of leading scholars shows how the conflict evolved from the geopolitical, ideological, economic and sociopolitical environments of the two world wars and interwar period.
Author: Kenneth B. Pyle Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674989082 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 259
Book Description
No nation was more deeply affected by America’s rise to world power than Japan. President Franklin Roosevelt’s uncompromising policy of unconditional surrender led to the catastrophic finale of the Asia-Pacific War and the most intrusive international reconstruction of another nation in modern history. Japan in the American Century examines how Japan, with its deeply conservative heritage, responded to the imposition of a new liberal order. The price Japan paid to end the occupation was a cold war alliance with the United States that ensured America’s dominance in the region. Still traumatized by its wartime experience, Japan developed a grand strategy of dependence on U.S. security guarantees so that the nation could concentrate on economic growth. Yet from the start, despite American expectations, Japan reworked the American reforms to fit its own circumstances and cultural preferences, fashioning distinctively Japanese variations on capitalism, democracy, and social institutions. Today, with the postwar world order in retreat, Japan is undergoing a sea change in its foreign policy, returning to an activist, independent role in global politics not seen since 1945. Distilling a lifetime of work on Japan and the United States, Kenneth Pyle offers a thoughtful history of the two nations’ relationship at a time when the character of that alliance is changing. Japan has begun to pull free from the constraints established after World War II, with repercussions for its relations with the United States and its role in Asian geopolitics.
Author: Takafusa Nakamura Publisher: ISBN: Category : Japan Languages : en Pages : 320
Book Description
The economy of Japan, with its high rates of growth, exemplary productivity levels, overall stability, and resilience in the face of financial and other crises, has been one of the wonders of the postwar world. In this book, which has since its first publication in 1981 been a standard text and reference work on the postwar economy, one of Japan's leading economist-scholars describes its workings, its roots in the prewar and wartime years, and its structure and institutions. For this revised second edition, the author has written several new chapters, added data bringing the discussion up to the 1990s, and reorganized the presentation.
Author: John W Dower Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company ISBN: 9780393320275 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 692
Book Description
This study of modern Japan traces the impact of defeat and reconstruction on every aspect of Japan's national life. It examines the economic resurgence as well as how the nation as a whole reacted to defeat and the end of a suicidal nationalism.
Author: Akira Iriye
Author: Yoshikuni Igarashi
Author: Aaron Forsberg
Author: Jennifer M. Miller
Author: Kenneth B. Pyle
Author: Andrew Gordon
Author: Melvyn P. Leffler
Author: Kenneth B. Pyle
Author: Takafusa Nakamura
Author: John W Dower