Victim As Hero

James Orr provides the first systematic, historical inquiry into the emergence of the concept of victimhood in postwar Japan. He describes vividly how the notion of victimhood has been institutionalized through the use of elite political rhetoric, school texts, novels, films, and reparations battles, and he offers a compelling explanation for the peculiar, distorted form that moral argumentation surrounding war responsibility has taken. This is a politically and intellectually courageous study that arrives at balanced, dispassionate, illuminating, and persuasive conclusions.-Gary D. Allinson, University of Virginia; ""With courage and sensitivity, Orr goes right to the heart of postwar nationalism to show how defeat in the war encouraged pacifist attitudes among ordinary Japanese people that, in turn, provided a cultural logic for a new national identity constructed around a collectivized sense of victimhood. After reading The Victim as Hero, historians of Japan will have to reconsider prevailing assumptions about the forms and functions of Japanese nationalism. This book should be required reading for scholars of nationalism, modern Japanese culture, society and politics, and for anyone who wishes to understand the challenges and possibilities of democracy in contemporary Japan.""-Kevin M. Doak, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign