Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan.

Most people learn in high school about WWII and the way the Japanese military elite took advantage of the emperor to wage a costly war of expansionist aims. Herbert Bix argues against this common interpretation of the pacific theater in his Pulitzer Prize-winning history of Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. His writing style is excellent and he seamlessly crafts primary sources into his narrative to give his readers a compelling account of Hirohito's war responsibility. He discusses in detail the cabinet-imperial court duo of irresponsibility and Hirohito's ability to manipulate the course of the war through his ability to appoint the Prime Minister and to speak through his court members. Although Hirohito was very impressionable by his advisors, he was not a puppet, but an activist monarch who struggled to show himself to be a constitutional monarch after the likes of Britain's King George V while being an autocrat.

Bix makes clear that the transition out of the Taisho era of his father was also a transition from decentralizing democratization back to the exaltation of the throne as that of a living deity--a return to Meiji times. Although most people did not believe him to in fact be a divine being, he held the utmost respect and reverence to the point that people could be called upon to sacrifice themselves for his sake. When Japan was defeated, the language was not that the emperor, military, and government had failed, but that the resolve of the Japanese people was to be blamed. They had failed the emperor.

Bix provides a comprehensive narrative of Hirohito's early childhood and schooling to his death while simultaneously giving a history of Japan as well. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in Japanese 20th century history.

General Updates:

• Have a job lead at the Department of the Interior thanks to Margaret Bradley via Kaitlyn.
• Going to visit a museum with Fawaz and Kevin this afternoon.
• Busy working on a Fulbright ETA application.
• CI tabling went well again this past Wednesday.