Preface

Summary

Around eighty years have passed since Japan's defeat in the Asia-Pacific War and the beginning of the country's reemergence as a prominent global economy and liberal democracy. While the sense of a postwar era faded quickly for many other nations involved in World War II, for Japan the idea of the “postwar” has remained salient through to the present, albeit fading somewhat with each subsequent generation. The reasons for this persistence are complex, partly relating to wartime and colonial issues that remain unresolved but also due to the symbolism of the “postwar” as a marker for a positive turn away from a seemingly defective past. The essays in this volume attempt to rethink Japan's postwar era from multiple perspectives. As readers will discover, the authors hardly speak with one voice about the postwar era—no doubt to be expected when tracing the multiple and complex histories of such a tumultuous period in Japan's modern history. Nonetheless, in one way or another, all of the essays in this handbook point to the ongoing validity of understanding the period after August 15, 1945, as a coherent one, while also revealing how the era itself has incorporated identifiable sub-eras and phases. It is the authors’ hope that readers will be encouraged to think not only about the specific content of the chapters, but also the larger question of the “postwar” in Japan and why the notion has persisted for so long.

I would like to sincerely thank all of the authors who contributed to this handbook. It was an honor to edit their work from which I learned so much. The willingness of such a distinguished group of scholars to join this project and the effort they put into their contributions was truly humbling. Thank you to Bennett Richardson for initially contacting me about editing a handbook in this series. I fondly recall our first meeting together with Mark Gresham in Fujisawa City on the eve of the pandemic in early 2020. My deepest gratitude to Mark Gresham who was enthusiastically supportive of this project from the outset and thereafter provided an astounding level of support as the handbook took shape. Mark's steady hand and wise judgement made this volume better in innumerable ways. Thanks also to Shin Takahashi who served as a reviewer for the handbook. Likewise, Shin's feedback helped to improve the final product.