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Author: Stephen Large
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134968760
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 282
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Book Description
Emperor Hirohito reigned for more than sixty years, yet we know little about him or the part he really played in the turbulent history of Showa Japan. Stephen Large draws on a wide range of Japanese and Western sources in his study of Emperor Hirohito's political role in Showa Japan (1926-89). This analysis focuses on key events in his career such as the extent to which he bore responsibility for Japanese aggression in the Pacific in 1941, and explains why Hirohito remains such a contested symbol in Japanese post war politics.
Author: Stephen Large
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134968760
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 282
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Book Description
Emperor Hirohito reigned for more than sixty years, yet we know little about him or the part he really played in the turbulent history of Showa Japan. Stephen Large draws on a wide range of Japanese and Western sources in his study of Emperor Hirohito's political role in Showa Japan (1926-89). This analysis focuses on key events in his career such as the extent to which he bore responsibility for Japanese aggression in the Pacific in 1941, and explains why Hirohito remains such a contested symbol in Japanese post war politics.
Author: Herbert P. Bix
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061860476
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 832
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Book Description
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize In this groundbreaking biography of the Japanese emperor Hirohito, Herbert P. Bix offers the first complete, unvarnished look at the enigmatic leader whose sixty-three-year reign ushered Japan into the modern world. Never before has the full life of this controversial figure been revealed with such clarity and vividness. Bix shows what it was like to be trained from birth for a lone position at the apex of the nation's political hierarchy and as a revered symbol of divine status. Influenced by an unusual combination of the Japanese imperial tradition and a modern scientific worldview, the young emperor gradually evolves into his preeminent role, aligning himself with the growing ultranationalist movement, perpetuating a cult of religious emperor worship, resisting attempts to curb his power, and all the while burnishing his image as a reluctant, passive monarch. Here we see Hirohito as he truly was: a man of strong will and real authority. Supported by a vast array of previously untapped primary documents, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan is perhaps most illuminating in lifting the veil on the mythology surrounding the emperor's impact on the world stage. Focusing closely on Hirohito's interactions with his advisers and successive Japanese governments, Bix sheds new light on the causes of the China War in 1937 and the start of the Asia-Pacific War in 1941. And while conventional wisdom has had it that the nation's increasing foreign aggression was driven and maintained not by the emperor but by an elite group of Japanese militarists, the reality, as witnessed here, is quite different. Bix documents in detail the strong, decisive role Hirohito played in wartime operations, from the takeover of Manchuria in 1931 through the attack on Pearl Harbor and ultimately the fateful decision in 1945 to accede to an unconditional surrender. In fact, the emperor stubbornly prolonged the war effort and then used the horrifying bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, together with the Soviet entrance into the war, as his exit strategy from a no-win situation. From the moment of capitulation, we see how American and Japanese leaders moved to justify the retention of Hirohito as emperor by whitewashing his wartime role and reshaping the historical consciousness of the Japanese people. The key to this strategy was Hirohito's alliance with General MacArthur, who helped him maintain his stature and shed his militaristic image, while MacArthur used the emperor as a figurehead to assist him in converting Japan into a peaceful nation. Their partnership ensured that the emperor's image would loom large over the postwar years and later decades, as Japan began to make its way in the modern age and struggled -- as it still does -- to come to terms with its past. Until the very end of a career that embodied the conflicting aims of Japan's development as a nation, Hirohito remained preoccupied with politics and with his place in history. Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan provides the definitive account of his rich life and legacy. Meticulously researched and utterly engaging, this book is proof that the history of twentieth-century Japan cannot be understood apart from the life of its most remarkable and enduring leader.
Author: Ikuhiko Hata
Publisher: Global Oriental
ISBN: 9004213376
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 300
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Book Description
This is a most important new work of Japanese scholarship on Emperor Hirohito, the English edition having been long delayed following the untimely death of distinguished American historian Marius B. Jansen (Emeritus Professor, Princeton) in December 2000, who had been actively collaborating with David Noble in the translation of Hata Ikuhiko's original study in Japanese, first published in 1984.
Author: Peter Wetzler
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824862856
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 310
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Book Description
The debate over Emperor Hirohito's accountability for government decisions and military operations up to the end of the World War II began before the end of the war and has continued even after his death. This book documents this controversy while providing insights into the Showa emperor's role in military planning in imperial Japan. It argues that Hirohito both knew of and participated in such planning and offers evidence that he was informed well in advance of the planned attack on Pearl Harbor. Using Japanese primary sources, this text aims to show that Hirohito's participation in the decision-making process was entirely consistent with his intellectual background and his passionate belief in the significance of the imperial tradition for the Japanese polity (kokutai) in prewar Japan.
Author: Tessa Morris-Suzuki
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 178093968X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345
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Book Description
Showa, Japanese for 'radiant peace', was the name given to Emperor Hirohito's reign at his accession in 1926. This was the beginning of a significant period of growth of militarism, the Pacific war and the phenomenal post-war economic expansion of Japan. The first book to present modern Japanese history through the eyes of individuals, Showa presents the experiences of three individuals born at the beginning of this age, giving a unique inside view of Japan's recent history. Their experiences include training as a suicide pilot, being a draft evader during the Pacific War, a leader in the Communist Party, and a colonist in Korea, turned overnight in August 1945 from a member of the ruling elite into a refugee. First published in 1984, this title is part of the Bloomsbury Academic Collections series.
Author: Carol Gluck
Publisher: W. W. Norton
ISBN: 9780393029840
Category : Japan
Languages : en
Pages : 315
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Book Description
Showa - the six-decade period of Emperor Horihito's reign, which began in 1926 and ended with his death in 1989 - accounts for fully half of Japan's modern history. It was a turbulent time of aggressive and catastrophic war, defeat and foreign occupation, domestic transformation and spectacular growth. The end of Showa provided and occasion for the Japanese to confront their past and the roots of their present success.
Author: Hans Brinckmann
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 1462900267
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
Japan's momentous Showa era began in 1926, when Emperor Hirohito ascended the throne, and ended with his death in 1989. This was a tumultuous period in modern Japanese history—a time of great disaster and tremendous triumph for Japan. This book focuses on the post-war period in Japan when the nation stood at the zenith of her economic power. Today, the term Showa is shorthand for a glamorous period in which, all too briefly, Japan was the richest nation on earth and the envy of the developed world. A growing nostalgia for this period is now memorialized in Japan in a national holiday. It was an era of stratospheric growth which saw Japan's transition from an isolated, impoverished nation to a peaceful one holding an exalted position as the world's second largest economy. But what is the true meaning of the Showa era, and what is its legacy for the Japanese today? In Showa Japan, Hans Brinckmann provides a clear-eyed exploration of the Showa period as it really was—not just a time of wondrous change but of wild excesses that would eventually come crashing down with the bursting of Japan's economic bubble—exactly as occurred in the rest of the world, but almost 20 years earlier! From the heights of extravagance to the lean years that followed, Brinkmann, a long-time resident of Japan, examines the impact of the Showa era and its aftermath on every aspect of Japanese society. Featuring dozens of period photographs, interviews, and a wealth of factual information and personal reflections, this book provides an in-depth portrait of a Japan that once was—as well as a blueprint for one that might still be, if only the lessons of the past could be learned.
Author: Edwin P. Hoyt
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248
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Book Description
Hoyt's biography, taking advantage of recent posthumous revelations of a Japanese foreign service diplomat, portrays Hirohito as a man of peace held captive by his role in Japanese society and government . . . Library Journal A successful new book from a topnotch writer . . . Booklist . . . provocative . . . Kirkus Reviews Was Emperor Hirohito to blame for Japan's expansionist military policies--and its atrocities--in World War II? Was he out to make the world his empire? This most extensive biography of the emperor in English challenges portrayals of Hirohito as either an unworldly scientist or a swashbuckling conspirator who tried to conquer the globe with military might. Using sources uncovered as recently as 1991, Hoyt reveals that the emperor was fundamentally a peace-loving man caught in a turbulent period when the Japanese military gained extraordinary power. He became the virtual prisoner of an Imperial system that prevented him from leading his country into an era of peace and prosperity, his boyhood dream. Hoyt's account, backed by a decade of research, details the emperor's repeated attempts to thwart the Imperial Army's headlong drive toward war. Even when defeat was certain, Hoyt maintains, Hirohito had to outmaneuver the army in order to surrender to Allied forces. Only then, in postwar years, did the emperor see his wishes for his country come true. To help the reader assess the emperor's life, Hoyt begins by examining the years preceding Hirohito's reign. He then focuses on the Manchurian incidents, the struggle for power in Japan, the China war, the global conflict and Japan's role in it, and the country's final capitulation. Critical passages on events preceding and during World War II, supported by the recently released diaries of men close to the emperor, detail the process by which Hirohito increasingly lost power as the army gained control. Turning his attention to the post-war years, Hoyt chronicles Japan's economic growth and the changing role of the emperor in Japanese society. Photographs from Japanese sources enhance the narrative. Hirohito: The Emperor and the Man offers new insight into the motives of a widely misunderstood leader. Hoyt's Hirohito is a quiet man with scholarly leanings; a patriot who loved his country but also admired Western qualities; a monarch who wished to act responsibly at a critical juncture but lacked the authority to do so.
Author: Noriko Kawamura
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295806311
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248
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Book Description
This reexamination of the controversial role Emperor Hirohito played during the Pacific War gives particular attention to the question: If the emperor could not stop Japan from going to war with the Allied Powers in 1941, why was he able to play a crucial role in ending the war in 1945? Drawing on previously unavailable primary sources, Noriko Kawamura traces Hirohito�s actions from the late 1920s to the end of the war, analyzing the role Hirohito played in Japan�s expansion. Emperor Hirohito emerges as a conflicted man who struggled throughout the war to deal with the undefined powers bestowed upon him as a monarch, often juggling the contradictory positions and irreconcilable differences advocated by his subordinates. Kawamura shows that he was by no means a pacifist, but neither did he favor the reckless wars advocated by Japan�s military leaders.
Author: Shigeru Mizuki
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
ISBN: 1770464700
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 534
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Book Description
A fascinating period in Japanese History explored by a master of manga Showa 1926-1939: A History of Japan is the first volume of Shigeru Mizuki’s meticulously researched historical portrait of twentieth century Japan. This volume deals with the period leading up to World War II, a time of high unemployment and other economic hardships caused by the Great Depression. Mizuki’s photo-realist style effortlessly brings to life Japan of the 1920s and 1930s, depicting bustling city streets and abandoned graveyards with equal ease. When the Showa Era began, Mizuki himself was just a few years old, so his earliest memories coincide with the earliest events of the Era. With his trusty narrator Rat Man, Mizuki brings history into the realm of the personal, making it palatable, and indeed compelling, for young audiences as well as more mature readers. As he describes the militarization that leads up to World War II, Mizuki’s stance toward war is thoughtful and often downright critical – his portrayal of the Nanjing Massacre clearly paints the incident (a disputed topic within Japan) as an atrocity. Mizuki’s Showa 1926-1939 is a beautifully told history that tracks how technological developments and the country’s shifting economic stability had a role in shaping Japan’s foreign policy in the early twentieth century. Translated from the Japanese by Zack Davisson.
