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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 Hirohito’s 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, Japan’s Emperor Hirohito cultivated the image of a reluctant, detached monarch, a façade 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 Historian Herbert P. Bix has unearned hundreds of previously untapped documents including the unpublished letters and diaries of Hirohito’s royal court, tracing the key events of his sixty-three-year reign (1926 – 1989), and shedding light on his uniquely active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 emperor’s personal involvement in every stage of the Pacific War. With rare insight, he shows how Hirohito avoided punishment for his nation’s defeat and how the Japanese people have struggled to come to terms with this dark chapter in their history.
Trained since childhood to lead his nation as a living deity, Japan’s Emperor Hirohito cultivated a detached façade which masked a fierce cunning and powerful ambition. Historian Herbert P. Bix has unearthed hundreds of previously untapped documents, including the unpublished letters and diaries of Hirohito’s royal court, shedding light on his uniquely active yet self-effacing stewardship.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 emperor’s personal involvement in every stage of the Pacific War. He shows how Hirohito avoided punishment for his nation’s defeat and how the Japanese people have struggled to come to terms with this dark chapter in their history. The Pulitzer Prize-winning Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan explains the impact this enigmatic figure had on Japan and its place on the world stage. Herbert P. Bix 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 U.S. and Japan. He has taught Japanese history at a number of American and Japanese Universities, most recently at Harvard and the Graduate School of Social Sciences at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo. He lives in Winthrop, MA. “A historical bombshell ... The most controversial book yet on Japan’s previous emperor.” — The EconomistYou may also like
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