Embracing Defeat : Japan in the Wake of World War II

New York: W. W. Norton & Company - The New Press, 2000. First Printing . Trade Paperback. Very Good. 6" x 9. 676 Pages Indexed. Some cover edge and corner wear - otherwise tight book with no marks or stamps. Japan's emergence as a modern nation was stunning to behold: swifter, more audacious, more successful, and ultimately more crazed, murderous, and self-destructive than anyone had imagined possible. In retrospect, it seemed almost an illusion -- a ninety-three-year dream become nightmare that began and ended with American warships. In 1853, a modest fleet of four vessels, two of them coal-burning black ships, had arrived to force the country open. In 1945, a huge, glistening armada came back to close it.When all this began with the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry, Japan was a small country with few obvious resources. For over two centuries, intercourse with foreigners had been largely prohibited by its feudal shoguns Although the economy had become commercialized in those long years of seclusion, no industrial revolution had taken place, nor had there been any striking advances in science. If Americans and Europeans found these island people capable and clever as well as exotic, no one thought to say of them, as Napoleon had of neighboring China with its vast territories, its awesome population, and its millennia of high civilization, that here was a sleeping giant. -- From the Introduction. Contents in Six Parts: Victor and vanquished, Transcending Despair, Revolutions, Democracies, Guilts, and Reconstruction. Illustrated with dozens of documentary black and white photographs. An excellent history of Japan and its relations to the United States after World War 2.