Description
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
“A startling paintings — awesomely formidable, faultlessly researched, bold in its thesis, and profound in its implications.” — Business Week
“Great. . . . the whole thing a political biography will have to be.” — Richmond Instances-Dispatch
This wealthy and robust biography is now given contemporary relevance with a brand new creation by means of the writer that explores how Hirohito’s legacy persists in Japan to these days, and the way US international coverage within the area within the remaining ten years is knowledgeable by means of our afflicted prior with Japan and with Hirohito as a ruler in particular.
Trained considering the fact that adolescence to steer his country as a residing deity, Japan’s Emperor Hirohito cultivated the picture of a reluctant, indifferent monarch, a façade which masked a fierce crafty and robust ambition. Historian Herbert P. Bix has unearned masses of prior to now untapped files together with the unpublished letters and diaries of Hirohito’s royal courtroom, tracing the important thing occasions of his sixty-3-12 months reign (1926 – 1989), and dropping gentle on his uniquely energetic but self-effacing stewardship. Debunking the average symbol of Hirohito as a pawn within the fingers of the army, Bix exposes the emperor’s private involvement in each degree of the Pacific Warfare. With uncommon perception, he presentations how Hirohito have shyed away from punishment for his country’s defeat and the way the Jap other people have struggled to return to phrases with this darkish bankruptcy of their historical past.
