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| "Hirohito" |
| What was the author's challenge? | ||
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Fact: "Hirohito" won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize in the General Nonfiction category. "Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan" (Harper Collins/$35), written by Herbert P. Bix, an American historian and former professor at Hitotsubashi University, winner of the 85th Pulitzer Prize in the General Nonfiction category. Author's views In the introduction of "Hirohito" Bix describes the book as "challenging the orthodoxy established long before the Asia-Pacific War and fostered afterward by the leaders of the Allied occupation. He goes on to say that Hirohito was merely a figure-head within a framework of autocratic Imperial rule, and a puppet of the military." The author considers Hirohito "the one individual whose very existence manifested the deepest political dilemmas of modern Japan." For him Hirohito was "(n)either an arch conspirator nor a dictator." "{H}e was rather the leading participant in, and remains a key to understanding the major political and military events of his nation in the twentieth century." Bix insists that Hirohito's political role did not finish at the end of the WWII. He believes that Hirohito "was also a tense and troubled human being who deceived himself even more than others in struggling to perpetuate hierarchy and order at the expense of the democratic ideals enshrined in Japan's postwar constitution." People recommend "Hirohito" On the back cover of "Hirohito" a number of prominent scholars on Japan or distinctive thinkers such as James Fallows, John W. Dower, Noam Chomsky, Andrew Gordon, etc. recommend this book. Chalmers Johnson's recommendation stands out as different and interesting. He wrote: "Reading Herbert Bix's pioneering inquiry into Emperor Hirohito's life should make Americans angry. For the past 55 years, senior officials of the United States government have systematically lied to the American and Japanese people about Hirohito's true role in public affairs during the twentieth century." |
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