Reconsidering Postwar Japanese History

Simon Avenell is Professor of modern Japanese history at the Australian National University. He focuses on social, political, and intellectual developments after 1945. His books include Making Japanese Citizens (University of California Press, 2010), Transnational Japan in the Global Environmental Movement(University of Hawai’i Press, 2017), and Asia and Postwar Japan(Harvard University Press, 2022). In 2025 he will publish A History of Postwar Japan: Recovery, Prosperity, and Transformation (University of Hawai’i Press). He is currently conducting research on generational politics in contemporary Japan.

• Introduction: Imagining Japan’s Postwar Era (Simon Avenell); Part 1: The Origins of the Postwar. Ch. 1 Rethinking Imperial Legacies and the Cold War in Allied Occupied Japan (Deokhyo Choi); Ch. 2 Money, Banking, and Fiscal Reforms in Allied Occupied Japan, 1945–1952 (Simon James Bytheway); Part 2: The Political Postwar. Ch. 3 Arguing with Public Opinion: Polls and Postwar Democracy (Adam Bronson); Ch. 4 Japanese Postwar Political History from Left to Right (James Babb); Ch. 5 Nationalism under the Banner of Pacifism: Japanese Atomic Bombing Sufferers’ Struggle against the State (Akiko Naono); Ch. 6 Living with and Fighting against the Postwar Regime: Conservatism and Constitution in Postwar Japan (Christian G. Winkler); Part 3: Postwar Culture and Society. Ch. 7 Gendering Postwar Japan (Emily Chapman and Helen Macnaughtan); Ch. 8 Uncertain Futures, Destabilized Dreams (Eiko Maruko Siniawer); Ch. 9 Education in Japan Since 1945: Equality, Hierarchy, and Competition (Peter Cave); Ch. 10 From Raincoats to Ketchup: The Encroachment of Plastics during the High-growth Era (1955–1973) (Katarzyna J. Cwiertka); Ch. 11 Birds and Children as Barometers of Japan’s Postwar Environmental History (Janet Borland); Ch. 12 Japan’s Got Talent: The Rise of Tarento in Japanese Television Culture (Seong Un Kim); Part 4: The Transnational Postwar. Ch. 13 Postwar Japanese Feminism in Transnational Perspective (Julia C. Bullock); Ch. 14 Postwar Japanese History Seen through the Science of Reproductive and Population Politics (Aya Homei); Part 5: Japan’s Postwar in Asia and the World. Ch. 15 Japan’s American Alliance: Forgoing Autonomy for Deterrence (H.D.P. Envall); Ch. 16 The Endless Postwar: Okinawa at the Modern Frontier (Luke Franks); Ch. 17 International Orders, Territorial Problems and Japan’s Identity (Kimie Hara); Ch. 18 Manga, National Identity and Internationalization in Postwar Japan (Rebecca Suter); Part 6: Defining, Delineating, Historicizing, and Chronologizing the Postwar Era. Ch. 19 Discourses of War and Peace during Japan’s “Postwar” (Philip Seaton); Ch. 20 Postwar in the Post-Cold War: Postwar in the Heisei Era (Eiji Oguma)