Reprint. Originally published: 1999.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [565]-650) and index.

Victor and Vanquished -- Shattered Lives -- Euphemistic Surrender -- Unconditional Surrender -- Quantifying Defeat -- Coming Home ... Perhaps -- Displaced Persons -- Despised Veterans -- Stigmatized Victims -- Gifts From Heaven -- "Revolution from Above" -- Demilitarization and Democratization -- Imposing Reform -- Transcending Despair -- Kyodatsu: Exhaustion and Despair -- Hunger and the Bamboo-Shoot Existence -- Enduring the Unendurable -- Sociologies of Despair -- Child's Play -- Inflation and Economic Sabotage -- Cultures of Defeat -- Servicing the Conquerors -- "Butterflies," "Onlys," and Subversive Women -- Black-Market Entrepreneurship -- "Kasutori Culture" -- Decadence and Authenticity -- "Married Life" -- Bridges of Language -- Mocking Defeat -- Brightness, Apples, and English -- The Familiarity of the New -- Rushing into Print -- Bestsellers and Posthumous Heroes -- Heroines and Victims -- Revolutions -- Neocolonial Revolution -- Victors as Viceroys -- Reevaluating the Monkey-Men -- The Experts and the Obedient Herd -- Embracing Revolution -- Embracing the Commander -- Intellectuals and the Community of Remorse -- Grass-Roots Engagements -- Institutionalizing Reform -- Democratizing Everyday Language -- Making Revolution -- Lovable Communists and Radicalized Workers -- "A Sea of Red Flags" -- Unmaking the Revolution from Below -- Democracies -- Imperial Democracy: Driving the Wedge -- Psychological Warfare and the Son of Heaven -- Purifying the Sovereign -- The Letter, the Photograph, and the Memorandum -- Imperial Democracy: Descending Partway From Heaven -- Becoming Bystanders -- Becoming Human -- Cutting Smoke with Scissors -- Imperial Democracy: Evading Responsibility -- Confronting Abdication -- Imperial Tours and the Manifest Human -- One Man's Shattered God -- Constitutional Democracy: GHQ Writes a New National Charter -- Regendering a Hermaphroditic Creature -- Conundrums for the Men of Meiji -- Popular Initiatives for a New National Charter -- SCAP Takes Over -- GHQ's "Constitutional Convention" -- Thinking about Idealism and Cultural Imperialism -- Constitutional Democracy: Japanizing the American Draft -- "The Last Opportunity for the Conservative Group" -- The Translation Marathon -- Unveiling the Draft Constitution -- Water Flows, the River Stays -- "Japanizing" Democracy -- Renouncing War ... Perhaps -- Responding to a Fait Accompli -- Censored Democracy: Policing the New Taboos -- The Phantom Bureaucracy -- Impermissible Discourse -- Purifying the Victors -- Policing the Cinema -- Curbing the Political Left -- Guilts -- Victor's Justice, Loser's Justice -- Stern Justice -- Showcase Justice: The Tokyo Tribunal -- Tokyo and Nuremberg -- Victor's Justice and Its Critics -- Race, Power, and Powerlessness -- Loser's Justice: Naming Names -- What do you Tell the Dead when you Lose? -- A Requiem for Departed Heroes -- Irrationality, Science, and "Responsibility for Defeat" -- Buddhism as Repentance and Repentance as Nationalism -- Responding to Atrocity -- Remembering the Criminals, Forgetting Their Crimes -- Reconstructions -- Engineering Growth -- "Oh, Mistake!" -- Visible (and Invisible) Hands -- Planning a Cutting-Edge Economy -- Unplanned Developments and Gifts from the Gods -- Epilogue: Legacies/Fantasies/Dreams.

A foremost historian examines Japan in the immediate, shattering aftermath of World War II, giving readers the rich and turbulent interplay between West and East, the victor and the vanquished, in a way never before attempted. 75 illustrations.