As I am writing this, Japan born pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka is pitching a brilliant game for the Boston Red Sox. (note this was written like 4 years ago and I am only posting now because I am deleting a bunch of old files) The increased intermingling of Japanese baseball and American baseball is one of the countless cultural and political examples of the generally good relations between Japan and the United States. For many people in my generation it is hard to fathom that the United States and Japan where at war during the life time of our grand parents and possibly some our parents. In his book, Embracing Defeat John W. Dower describes what occurred in Japan following the proud nation’s defeat and subsequent occupation at the hands of the United States after World War Two. In the following paragraphs, I am going to describe the type of sources Dower used to gather his research and touch upon some of his general themes. In addition, I will discuss the striking similarities I found in the sentiment expressed by U.S. officials while occupying Japan to the current ideas that are being used to justify the continual occupation of Iraq.

            Before we look at the book, let’s take a quick look to see who exactly is John W. Dower. According to his About the Author page, Dower is one of the premier scholars regarding war and piece in modern Japan. His current position is professor of history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dower has garnered himself a lot of praise including winning a Pulitzer Prize and being nominated for an Academy Award for his documentary HellFire-----A Journey From Hiroshima.

            The variety in types of sources Dower employs when conducting his research is something he is praised for and gave me a sense of immediacy and being “on the ground” while reading. Throughout the book, Dower uses a combination of primary source documents, Japanese Literature at the time, news papers articles (with a particular fondness for quoting letters to the editor), songs, plays, poems, and more. Instead of just describing the public sentiment that the war was a major foolhardy folly after the war, Dower shows us the work of cartoonist of the time such as Kato Etsuro whose work illustrates the public’s reaction to the emperor’s surrender broadcast. (p.66)

            The poetry composed during postwar Japan is another one of Dower’s methods for analyzing the feelings of the public during that time. For example, he uses the words of poet Horiguchi Daigaku to give the reader a sense of the despair that was overtaking Japan following the war. (119) His focus on cartoonist and poets was fascinating to me because I believe that people often fail to look at the music, literature, poetry, and other forms of artistic expression as a way to get a window into a particular time and place including our own. For me, Dower’s use of art as a reference mirrored some of my own theories regarding the parallels between popular music and the economy. (for example in the late 90s when the economy was booming, happy pop music was most popular as opposed to the early 90s that saw the rise of alternative music and gansta rap which has more depressing themes during a time when the economy was not as strong)

            His repeated use of letters to the editor of newspapers as a source is something that I have not seen often but enjoyed. Dower discusses how an abusive officer during the war was lynched during the war and many people in the general population supported the lynching. If he just stated that people supported the lynching it would not be nearly as powerful as the stat that 16 out of 18 letters to the editor in the Asahi where supportive of the lynching. Later, the reprinting of a letter to the editor that was in essence a suicide note is yet another example of where the use of a Japanese citizens own words to describe the unendurable (p.97) situation that they were expected to endure is effective as opposed to other second hand means such as historical books about the time of the occupation of Japan.

            Regarding the justification by the Americans for occupation, I found it striking how similar it seemed to be to the justification used to invade Iraq. The occupation of Japan was an “experiment in induced democratization.” In addition, the goal was to have a complete and permanent disarmament and a changing of the psychology of the Japanese people. (p. 75) With the situation in Iraq, we are again conducting an experiment in induced democratization or many Japanese people put it during the time a “revolution from above.” The goal of a permanent disarmament of Japan can also be seen a parallel to the goal of disarming Iraq when it comes to any weapons of mass destruction they might have possessed or where in the process of trying to press.

            While the settlements behind the occupation of Japan and Iraq may in some ways are similar, the actual response of the citizens in the occupied countries where largely different which led to much different outcomes. In Japan, many powerful people supported the occupying force: Tokuda Kyuichi a communist party leader expressed his gratitude to the allied forces. (p.69) Cartoonist Kato described the occupying force as a gift from heaven. (p.68) However, there was some descent amount the Japanese population about the occupying force’s motives and whether or not the democracy that they were being given was a charade.

            While there were differences in opinion about the United States occupying forces, there was never the type of violence that is so common during the current occupation of Iraq. In addition, there was some jubilation during the initial toppling of Saddam’s regime in Iraq among the Iraqi people that was similar to the thoughts expressed in Japan after the war, but we where hardly greeted as liberators in the manner in which Dick Cheney famously predicted on Meet The Press. Another major difference between the 2 situations is that Japan does not have three distinct religious sects with animosity toward one another like Iraq has.  I would recommend anyone interesting in the latest Iraq war to read Embracing Defeat as a compare and contrast regarding the 2 occupations of another country by the United States.

            Another demographic of people that I would recommend the book too is anyone who is interested in the sexual revolution and or gender roles in general. Some of the most memorable moments in the book revolve around the “comfort facilities” and later the red line areas that were set up for United States soldiers. When people in the United States talk about women’s rights, they usually are referring to voting or abortion. In 1946 Japan it was declared that women had the “right” to be prostitutes. (p.132) I wonder if most modern American women would agree that is a right or would they argue that the right to become a prostitute is a perversion of the word right. On a side note, it is interesting that prostitutes made more money then many other jobs in Japan; this is also might be true in the United States in terms of women who work as prostitutes and strippers.

            In the end, I would recommend this book to anyone interesting in postwar Japan and speficically to anyone who wants to compare that time period to other periods in human history. The book is very well researched and the variety of sources give the book more life then blasé textbooks about the time do.