Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan

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 Historian Herbert P. Bix has unearned hundreds of previously untapped documents including the unpublished letters and diaries of Hirohitos royal court, tracing the key events of his sixty-three-year reign (1926 1989), and shedding light on his uniquely active yet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.