Entwined Atrocities

New Insights into the U.S.–Japan Alliance

Yuki Tanaka

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Hardback

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English

Peter Lang Publishing Inc
20 March 2023

Second World War; Aid & relief programmes; Diplomacy; Geopolitics

Numerous books on the topic of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been published hitherto. Yet, no one has written about the fire and atomic bombings in the context of the U.S. justification of the crime of indiscriminate bombings and its relationship to Japan’s political exploitation of the atomic bombing to cover up Hirohito’s war responsibility. Further, no one has analyzed the fundamental contradiction in Japan’s peace constitution between the concealment of Hirohito’s war crimes and the responsibility of the U.S. Readers will learn how Japanese and U.S. official war memories were crafted to justify their respective wartime performances, exposing the flaws and failing of present-day democracy in Japan and the U.S. This book also explores how Japanese people could potentially create a truly powerful cultural memory of war, utilizing various forms of artwork including Japan’s traditional performing art, Noh. It should appeal to many readers—historians (both modern American and Japanese history specialists), constitutional scholars, students, peace and anti-nuclear activists, intellectuals as well as general readers.

“Japanese historian Yuki Tanaka presents here his life work on the grand subjects of Japanese war responsibility, the US-Japan relationship, US and Japanese war crimes and the emperor system. Matching meticulous archival research with personal and political advocacy, he concludes by calling upon Japanese and American civil society to confront the present-day Japanese state and inter-state system as a fundamentally flawed, seven-decade long design of obfuscation, concealment, and manipulation. It is also, he argues, increasingly precarious. Tanaka’s radical, wide-ranging thesis deserves to be read.”

—Gavan McCormack, Emeritus Professor, Australian National University

“This fascinating book caps decades of careful thinking about why nominally democratic Japan seems so undemocratic and so trapped in self-destructive foreign policies today. The author zeros in on postwar Japanese and American government collaborations to explain this phenomenon, including joint evasion of responsibility for bombing civilians during World War II, when, ironically, they themselves were bitter enemies. This is a genuinely thought-provoking contribution with many arresting observations based on little-known research about such topics as the emperor’s place in the postwar Japanese political system, the 1945 surrender decision, Japan’s history of empire, and the politics of nuclear weapons in postwar Japan.”

—Laura Hein, the Harold H. and Virginia Anderson Professor of History, Northwestern University, USA

By: Yuki Tanaka
Imprint: Peter Lang Publishing Inc
Country of Publication: United States
Edition: New edition
Dimensions: Height: 225mm, Width: 150mm,
Weight: 690g
ISBN: 9781433199530
ISBN 10: 143319953X
Pages: 388
Publication Date: 20 March 2023
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Foreword – Acknowledgments – Author’s Note – List of Illustrations – Prologue: The U.S. and Japan’s Complicity of Denial of War Responsibilities – Indiscriminate Firebombing by the U.S. Forces and the Air Defense System of Japan’s Emperor- Fascism State – Mystification of the Atomic Bombing— Tacit Complicity Between the U.S. and Japan – The Atomic Bombing, the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal and the Shimoda Case – The Insoluble Contradiction Embedded in the Peace Constitution— The Preamble and Article 9 versus Chapter 1 – Veiled Political Power of the Emperor as the Symbol of Japan – Challenging the Emperor’s Power of Symbolic Authority— Struggles to Humanize the Emperor – The U.S.– Japan Collaboration in Remembering War Atrocities— in Comparison with the German Case – Photographer Fukushima Kikujirō— Confronting Images of Atomic Bomb Survivors – Memories and Symbolism: For Establishing Japan’s Culture of Remembrance – Epilogue: The Nature of Japan’s Postwar Democracy and Its Future – Index.

Yuki Tanaka was a Research Professor at the Hiroshima Peace Institute of Hiroshima City University until his retirement in 2015. His publications include Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II and Japan’s Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution During World War II and the US Occupation.

Reviews for Entwined Atrocities: New Insights into the U.S.–Japan Alliance

In both English and Japanese, Yuki Tanaka has established himself as one of our most original and incisive analysts of war crimes in the Asia-Pacific theater during World War Two.... Professor Tanaka's current book is genuinely original in positing an intimate conjunction of several of the grand issues that have dominated his scholarship to date. One is Japanese atrocities and war crimes. A second is the criminal nature of U.S. strategic and nuclear targeting of civilians. A third is the immediate postwar U.S. and Japanese coverup of the emperor's war responsibility (and how this dovetailed with the coverup of the atrocious nature of America's air war). A fourth is how this double coverup created inherent contradictions in Japan's so-called peace constitution of 1947, which remains unrevised to the present day. The final overarching focus is on how understanding this dynamic concatenation can help us better understand the flaws and failings of present-day democracy in Japan. There is no precedent for such a complex and intimately comparative analysis in contemporary scholarship on Japan and the United States. This most certainly deserves a serious hearing. --John W. Dower, Emeritus Professor, School of Humanities, Massachusetts Institute of Technology