Winner of both a Pulitzer prize and a US national book award for non-fiction, John Dower's "Embracing Defeat" comes highly recommended. In over six hundred pages it manages to relate the events that led to the creation of a peace loving democracy through extensive references to archives and personal sources. The history of the surrender of Japan, the nature of the occupation, the drafting of the first constitution, the treatment of war criminals and the role of the emperor are all woven together to paint a detailed and enthralling narrative on the evolution of contemporary Japan. The immediate response of the people to the Emperor's "polished ideological gem" the radio broadcast of August 15, 1945, in which he surrenders without explicitly using the words surrender or defeat is "pragmatic and self serving."

...Although the emperor's broadcast put an end to the American air raids, it was said, with a fine touch of hyperbole, that the skies over Tokyo remained black with smoke for days to come. Bonfires of documents replaced napalm's hellfires as the wartime elites followed the lead of their sovereign and devoted themselves to obscuring their wartime deeds.

The book is relatively long by any standards due to the thoroughness of its scholarship, the sheer wealth of the sources it is based upon and the inclusion of almost one hundred photographs and illustrations. However only a book this comprehensive could do justice to the endless factors that have interacted to make Japan what it is today. This is not a book which shies away from the historical realities of the second world war and its aftermath and the many "pragmatic" decisions made by the Americans, General MacArthur in particular. Its length is justified by the fact that only Japan had to undergo such a process in the twentieth century. There are some parallels with countries such as Italy after the war in relation to issues such as dealing with the threat of instability, the treatment of war criminals and the imposition of democracy "from above." Economics also became a key concern of the occupying forces because of the state of infrastructure and the fact of a huge growth in the black market which was endemic in post second worldwar countries. Like Paul Ginsborg's "A History of Contemporary Italy" a book of considerable documentary value and as fascinating as a novel.