Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering: Japan in the Modern World

Historian John W. Dower's celebrated investigations into modern Japanese history, World War II, and U.S.-Japanese relations have earned him critical accolades and numerous honors, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Bancroft Prize. Now Dower returns to the major themes of his groundbreaking work, examining American and Japanese perceptions of key moments in their shared history.

Both provocative and probing, Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering delves into a range of subjects, including the complex role of racism on both sides of the Pacific War, the sophistication of Japanese wartime propaganda, the ways in which the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is remembered in Japan, and the story of how the postwar study of Japan in the United States and the West was influenced by Cold War politics.

Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering offers urgent insights by one of our greatest interpreters of the past into how citizens of democracy should deal with their history and, as Dower writes, "the need to constantly ask what is not being asked."


Author: John W. Dower
Publisher: New Press
Published: 02/04/2014
Pages: 336
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.84lbs
Size: 8.36h x 5.47w x 0.82d
ISBN13: 9781595589378
ISBN10: 1595589376
BISAC Categories:
- History | Asia | Japan
- History | Historiography
- History | Wars & Conflicts | World War II | General

About the Author
John W. Dower is Professor Emeritus of History at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of several books, including War Without Mercy, Cultures of War, and Embracing Defeat, which was the recipient of numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Bancroft Prize, and the Fairbank Prize. He lives in Boston.