Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan

(Paperback)

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Winner of the Pulitzer Prize

A startling work -- awesomely ambitious, faultlessly researched, daring in its thesis, and profound in its implications." Business Week

"Magnificent. . . . everything a political biography should be." Richmond Times-Dispatch

This rich and powerful biography is now given fresh relevance with a new introduction by the author that explores how Hirohitos legacy persists in Japan to this day, and how US foreign policy in the region in the last ten years is informed by our troubled past with Japan and with Hirohito as a ruler specifically.

Trained since childhood to lead his nation as a living deity, Japans Emperor Hirohito cultivated the image of a reluctant, detached monarch, a faade which masked a fierce cunning and powerful ambition. Historian Herbert P. Bix has unearned hundreds of previously untapped documents including the unpublished letters and diaries of Hirohitos royal court, tracing the key events of his sixty-three-year reign (1926 1989), and shedding light on his uniquely active yet self-effacing stewardship. Debunking the common image of Hirohito as a pawn in the hands of the military, Bix exposes the emperors personal involvement in every stage of the Pacific War. With rare insight, he shows how Hirohito avoided punishment for his nations defeat and how the Japanese people have struggled to come to terms with this dark chapter in their history.

Reviews

A historical bombshellCompellingThe most controversial book yet on Japans previous emperor. The Economist The authors virtuoso scholarship and accessible narrative invite us into Hirohitos world and change the way we think of recent history; his portrayal of a monarch rationalizing evil is superb. The New Yorker The triumph of Mr. Bix is that of a tailor able to assemble disparate scaps of material and sew them into a seamless whole. The New York Times Myth-shattering[T]his superb biography should jog loose a few suppressed memories. Newsweek Nothing published since the Berlin Walls fall quite comes up to Herbert Bixs new bookIts a startling workawesomely ambitious, faultlessly researched, daring in its thesis, and profound in its implications. Business Week Persuasive. . . . Bix proves, in an immensely readable 800 pages, that good imperial biography is still possible. The Times Literary Supplement

Author Bio

Herbert P. Bix grew up in Winthrop, Massachusetts, and earned his Ph.D. in history and Far Eastern languages from Harvard University. For the past thirty years he has written extensively on modern and contemporary Japanese history in leading journals in the United States and Japan. He has taught Japanese history at a number of American and Japanese universities, most recently at Harvard, and is currently a professor in the Graduate School of Social Sciences at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo.