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Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan

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Herbert Bix's biography of Emperor Hirohito of Japan is an outstanding work, but it must be read with caution, a critical eye and an open mind. The work is permeated with a sense of Bix's righteous indignation at Hirohito's escape from censure for his part in Japan's role in China and in the Second World War and this seems to color his judgment when facts grow thin and motivations are evaluated.

What Bix contributes to the historical record regarding Hirohito, the Japanese military, and Japan's wars is important and revealing. In Western culture the term "emperor" connotes Rome with a sort of English royalty superimposed on it, a blend of the two greatest empires of the Western world. What gets lost in this merger is the memory that the emperor in the Roman system enjoyed a godhead and that the empire was partly a theocracy.

Theocracy is a missing element in most evaluations of the seemingly insane strategic decisions that governed Japan's entry into, atrocities during, and conduct of World War II. The blind faith that overrode rationality in upper echelons of the Army and Navy makes more sense in the light of the theocratic Shintoist emperor system. Bound up with a system of belief in a state headed by a living god, the racist inhumanity of Japanese atrocities becomes more understandable, but not justifiable. The willingness to "die for the Emperor" in banzai charges and kamikaze flights also becomes more clear.

But where Bix's work raises question marks is in his evaluation of Hirohito's role. While Bix has unearthed an emperor who definitely had a hand in government and the fatal decisions that propelled Japan into war, and bore unacknowledged responsibility for those decisions, he has not necessarily proven Hirohito to be their animating force. But that is the light in which Bix evaluates those missing elements of the record that call for speculation.

An alternative interpretation occurs which, while not going as far as Bix's evaluation, does not divorce Hirohito from his responsibility. Where Bix sees Hirohito as an animating force in the actions of Japan's ruling elites and militarists, too often that animation comes in the form of ratifying faits accompli. Too often intentions that Bix would have us believe were formed by Hirohito were initiated by others, sometimes without Hirohito's foreknowledge. What occurs is that, perhaps, Hirohito did not hold the initiative in the Japanese government.

What becomes apparent in Bix's description of Hirohito's upbringing, personality and conduct, is that he was so insulated from reality that he never enjoyed an undistorted view of the world. He was certainly not the disconnected figurehead who only stepped in at the last moment to save Japan from more atomic bombs and partition with the Soviets. He was definitely active in charting Japan's course, but he did not necessarily hold the compass.

Bix would have us see Hirohito as the ultimate master of indirect rule, served by private intelligence systems to feed him the truth and manipulating all from behind the scenes in ways to make governmental decision appear to be the unanimous work of others presented to him only for his purely ceremonial rubber stamp. But was this a mastermind at work, or a relatively intelligent but confused and uncertain man trying to keep his head above water in a political/religious system he nominally enjoyed power over, but in which his military routinely indulged in acts of grand insubordination, assassination and mutiny? Japanese emperors had been deposed before, and while Hirohito nominally controlled the military, it obeyed when it chose and the ruling elites talked behind his back of the emperor's less than godlike bearing.

Had he been other than the awkward intellectual he was, Hirohito might well fit the role Bix casts for him, but his personality lacks the earmarks of a conqueror. It does bear the earmarks of uncertainty, fear and reaction. His actions are equally explainable as those of a man raised to be a god and generalissimo; who knew intellectually if not emotionally that he was neither; but was emotionally driven to fulfill those roles in all earnestness; attempting to survive in a cut-throat political system and becoming caught up in his role and his military's initial success to the ultimate detriment of himself and the nation.

Hirohito, while awkward of manner, was not stupid. He did not lack for political or military talent, but was no genius in either field. He did, after all, manage to survive, and in his circumstances that took considerable doing and the good fortune to be a useful symbol and tool to others in power, whether the Japanese elites, the Japanese military, or the American Occupation. He was also far from blameless for what happened in his merely human efforts to fulfill a role in which a god would find success difficult.

Hirohito should have been forced to abdicate and confined for life to a Shinto monastery. Japanese emperors had been forced into monastic retirement before and this would have been a suitable punishment for a man who abetted horrible crimes in an earnest attempt--later overtaken by hubris--to fulfill an unrealistic role he was raised and trained to from birth. His brother Takamatsu should have been Regent for Akihito's seven years of remaining minority under the strict supervision of the Occupation, and Akihito's enthronement should have coincided with the peace treaty, the Occupation's end, and the ratification of a new Constitution reducing the monarchy to figurehead status.

Bix's frustration with the unrepentant emperor and the unindicted elites of Japan is palpable. Perhaps had the Americans come as conquerors willing to destroy, vice avengers willing to rehabilitate, then there might have been some justice which might assuage Bix's understandable--but maybe unrealistic--moral outrage.

After all, can you condemn a man to death for his religious beliefs and for attempting to fulfill a delusion instilled in him from birth? For the horrible crimes along his tragic path he can certainly be confined for life...but not hanged.

This very detailed book needs your determined concentration. It is indeed a meticulously researched account of the life of Hirohito. Bix writes convincingly of the successful attempts, by Americans as well as by Japanese, to ensure Hirohito avoided a trial for war crimes and remained an anti-communist symbol of national unity. He also brings forward a mass of material to illustrate that the emperor was intimately involved in Japan's military policy in the 1930s and early 1940s. Although the general reader is hardly in a position to check first hand all Bix's primary source claims, it is the small details which stick in your mind: the special naval uniform Hirohito wore as Japan attacked the US navy in December 1941 and the private grief he expressed when Tojo was hanged in 1948. Bix has made it impossible for anyone seriously now to regard the emperor as a mere cypher or a victim of war Cabinet decisions. He needed a debunk in the English language and he has gotten precisely that.

In 1971 David Bergamini, a Rhodes Scholar, who was raised in the Orient and who speaks and reads Japanese, authored, "Japan's Imerial Conspiracy." Bergamini set forth a compelling argument in the role of the Japanese Emperor Hirohito in the planning and guidance of Japan's aggression before and during World War II. Japanese historians and western academia of the time savaged Bergamini; they closed their minds and buried the truth.

Professor Bix has researched and documented the truth of Bergamini's earlier thesis. He does not merely rewrite Bergamini's work but he puts flesh and meat on the bare bones of truth so denounced in 1971. Professor Bix presents the story of Hirohito. A story of deception extending from the Meiji Restoration to the creation of the plausible deniability doctrine of Emperor Hirohito. The Bix work sheds light as to why Japan has refused an apology to China and other of her victims of World War II; to apologize would be a grievious mortal affront to nation's sacred beliefs in the Enperor.

Publishers in Japan have refused to publish, "Hiohito: And the Making of Modern Japan." Japanese in many quarters, including the schools, still maintain the Rape-of-Nanking is but a vicious lie by those who are jealous of Japan. They cannot accept the truth that their Emperor would be a party to the atrocities committed against China and others.

To those readers who seek to fill-in the blank spaces of knowledge dealing with World War II, Professor Bix's work is a must-read. I would only hope that a like work will one day honestly document the excesses of the United States before and during World WarII.

Accepted wisdom says that from his accession in 1926 until the end of World War II, Emperor Hirohito of Japan was a European-style constitutional monarch, with some influence but no real power over his nation's destiny. He had no role in planning or waging the war, and knew nothing about war crimes and outrages like the Rape of Nanking or the Bataan Death March. It was the personal intervention of the peace-loving Emperor, the story goes, who realized the war was lost, that finally forced the militarists to surrender. After the war, the US-imposed Japanese constitution marked a complete break with tradition, and the beginning of a new political and social structure for the Japanese nation.

Herbert Bix accepts none of this conventional wisdom. Working from a wealth of Japanese and American sources, including many government documents from both nations' archives, Bix argues that the standard history is a tissue of lies. Indeed, Hirohito seemed to have lived his whole life surrounded, masked, and protected by lies -- first by his own government, and later reinforced by the Americans, who needed him and his nation as allies (not always willing) in the Cold War struggle against the Soviet Union.

Instead of a conventional biography, 'Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan' is a sweeping piece of political history. Bix argues convincingly that from the beginning, Hirohito had tremendous influence on the direction of Japanese government policy. His ministers consulted him, and heeded his advice. For example, he favored expansion of the war in China in the 1930s, and although he sometimes issued orders limiting the army's activities there, refused to punish officers who exceeded or ignored his orders -- provided their disobedience yielded positive results.

Bix sustains a tremendous volume of detail throughout his volume -- more than can (or should) be covered in a brief review. I encourage you to read the book yourself. It more than repays the effort.

The relationship between the US and Japan is one of the central pillars of American foreign policy in the post-war era. Now, with the end of the Cold War, there are signs the Japanese people are less and less willing to remain an American satrapy -- for all intents and purposes still an occupied country -- any longer. Herbert Bix's excellent book not only illuminates vital issues surrounding the Second World War, but also is tremendously useful for helping us understand the geopolitical world of today.

The author of this book, Herbert P. Bix, is an American who has long taught in Japan. I know him only by reputation, but his reputation doesn't inspire me to much confidence in his work. He is known as an adherent of the neo-Marxist historiography that continues to have a vogue in Japanese academic circles. To me, his book seems to show its stamp quite clearly.

Here are a few quotes from reviews in respected journals (rather than the advertising-influenced popular press) by people with strong reputations as scholars of modern Japanese history:

"Superbly written, meticulously researched, and vigorously advertised.... Other historians, examining more or less the same material, reached different conclusions. ... All the rescripts, edicts, and declarations of the emperor, which Bix quotes extensively and to which he attaches great importance, were composed by the cabinet or other government organs. All the appointments he `made' had been decided in advance by others and `humbly submitted' to him for approval. All the military orders he `issued' had been formulated by the armed forces and presented to him for signature. On some occasions his personal views were taken into consideration, but except for August 1945, he was never expected to make a major decision. ... The author accepts the evidence that fits his theory, but discards that which contradicts it. He believes Konoe that Hirohito endorsed the views of the military, but does not believe him that the emperor wished to avoid war (pp. 419-20). He believes Hirohito's admission, in the Monologue, that one of his motives for ending the war was to preserve the dynasty, but does not believe hint that his main motive was to save the people (p. 515 ) . When evidence is lacking, innuendo is used." -- Ben-Ami Shillony, _Journal of Japanese Studies_, 28,1 (Winter 2002): 141-146.

"Herbert Bix's book is a welcome contribution whether or not one agrees with his interpretations. ... Nor does he cite authors ... whose interpretations, based on documentary evidence that Bix ignores, differ from his own. ... Bix exaggerates Hirohito's importance. His own narrative account is at odds with his emphasis on Hirohito as the key decision maker because it shows the great extent to which the emperor was constrained by the bureaucratic monarchy within which he operated." -- Stephen S. Large, _Monumenta Nipponica_, 56, 1 (Spring 2001): 107-110.

"Bix is amply justified in accentuating Hirohito's active enthusiasm and engagement as supreme commander and in identifying his continued belligerence as a significant source of pressure on Japanese generals and admirals. But Bix clearly overstates the degree to which the emperor was able to initiate or precipitate changes in national policy.... His ambitious claims ... depend upon a very liberal reading of evidence that comes almost entirely from second-hand accounts.... The degree to which Bix recklessly outpaces his sources can perhaps best be summed up by the juxtaposition of a candid admission with a bold declaration. Without further elaboration, he proclaims, `Though no documents directly tie him to it, another feature of the brutal China war for which Hirohito should be charged with personal responsibility was the strategic bombing of Chungking and other cities.' ... Bix's daring in argument is also, unfortunately, reflected in the mechanics of this book. Mistransliterations abound here, and footnotes supporting controversial statements of fact or interpretation often point simply to other secondary sources." -- Frederick R. Dickinson, _Orbis_, 45, 4 (Fall 2001): 637-647.

(Some will criticize me, in turn, for not citing the much more favorable reviews of Marxist historians; I will leave that to others.)

These are only very brief snippets from much longer and deeper reviews, but as they suggest the general picture is of a book that has definite merits but which must be read carefully and knowledgably. If you are already quite familiar with Japan's history in the Taisho and Showa periods (so that you can tell where Bix omits or distorts important facts that are inconvenient for his argument) and want a fuller picture of Hirohito (and particularly of his early life) then the book will prove valuable. But if you are looking for a good introduction to the period and its issues, or to the emperor himself, look further.

The role of Hirohito in Japan's history as its Showa Emperor was a largely inglorious one, especially up to August of 1945. But to put the blame for Japan's ruinous course to and through World War II so squarely on his slight shoulders, as Bix does, not only distorts history but serves as a smokescreen to conceal its lessons for today. We have buried Hirohito, but the forces that propelled Japan into an awful and catastrophic war continue to stalk our world today. If we are deceived by the casuistry of Herbert Bix and his ilk, they will roam free to spawn new generations of demons.

Will O'Neil

In eyes or minds of most Japanese liberals and lefts, what the author Herbert Bix revealed in this book has "virtually" nothing new. "Hirohito" was no doubt the #1 war criminal responsible for the deaths of many millions. As the author pointed out, the major reason why "Hirohito" escaped from the "war criminal" trials and execution was that General MacArthur (and the American government that supported his Japanese occupation policy) was quite keen to use 'Hirohito" (his spiritual "authority", and not his real political"power") as a tool to suppress most effectively the turmoils in the post-war Japan which otherwise would have been caused by both ultra-rights /millitary heads (against American occupation) and lefts (socialists and communists) against the Japanese establishment.

Like many Japanese lefts, both my late father, who died at 83 in a few months after the "Hirohito"'s death in 1989, and myself long believed that both the "Emperor" (Hirohito) and the "Emperor System" (whether it is merely a "symbol"/"puppet" or not) should have been eliminated from Japan right after the end of WWII to establish the true democracy in Japan. Unfortunately our voice, which was considered only as a "tiny" fraction of Japanese people, has been totally ignored by the ruling conservative parties and governments in Japan for more than 55 years.

Since a Japanese translation of this English book would never be allowed to be publihsed in Japan (or none of the major Japanese publishers would dare to take such a publication risk) for the coming decade(s), I have no intention to translate it for Japanese readers, although this book is no doubt worth reading for most of open-minded (or even closed-minded) Japanese. Instead, I am planning to write/publish my own Japanese book entitled "Showa Emperor (Hirohito) and American Caesar (MacArthur): making a fatal secret deal in post-war Japan", shortly after I shall retire from science in 2007 at 65.

I am a Japanese citizen (born during WWII) working in Melbourne as a molecular oncologist who left Japan in 1973 to work in US, West Germany and Australia for a political reason, shortly after I received my Ph. D.. I firmly believe that the "Emperor System" is a highly malignant "tumor" creeping in Japanese society to be entirely eliminated as soon as possible in the coming 21st century. Otherwise he (or she) in this royal family could make "another" secret deal with a ruling political power(s) for their own survival somedays in the future. I am not against either "Hirohito", his sons or grandsons, personally, but strongly against this so-called "royal" (non-democratically elected) system that created him or his potential "treacherous" descents. Our history of more than two thousand years is telling us the real danger ahead.

I picked up this book in early September and here I am in the middle of November finally done with it. As a history teacher it is not easy to read a book of this size and length during the school year, if only this had come out during the summer. Hopefully it will take me less time to finish the new book on Ho Chi Minh.

First off, kudos to the author for making the book highly readable. Also, the book does a remarkable job with the primary source. The author could not have had an easy time gaining access to and translating the number of Japanese primary sources he makes use of. I was surprised by the number of Japanese sources he uses and a bit shocked at the lack of english secondary sources.

The book makes it loud and clear that Hirohito was not a passive monarch during WWII. The book makes it clear that while the military did many things in China on there own before WWII that Hirohito did nothing to stop it. The book makes it clear that Hirohito is was an active participant in the Japanese war machine between 1937-1945.

The author makes a strong case for this, backs it up, and presents it to the reader in an easy and interesting narrative.

I had a major problem with the way the book portrayed Harry S. Truman. I did not like the fact, that even though the author blames Hirohito for delaying the Japanese surrender setting the stage for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that he still has something negative to say about Truman. I believe after blaming Hirohito, the author felt it neccessary to add that Truman lacked "the patience and foresight" to hold off on the atomic bombings. I suggest anyone who wants a better look at the atomic bombings and Truman to look at Ferrell's "Truman and the Bomb."

I also felt the book lacked the emotional punch that was in Iris Chang's the Rape of Nanking. Bix, goes into detail about Hirohito's knowledge of the atrocities that were committed by the Japanese to the Chinese, but he does not do as good a job as Chang does in her book.

Also, the ending chapters in the book which cover the occupation of Japan and rebuilding of Japan after WWII pale in comparrison to "Embracing Defeat." While, Bix is more realistic and less an sympathetic toward the Japanese as the author of "Embracing Defeat" he did not do as good a job with the material. Any fan of Japanese history that has read "Embracing Defeat" will really not need to read the last 50 or so pages of the book.

But I am being picky. This was a much needed book. Too often in the circle of Japanese history writers there is a tendancy to allow admiration for Japanese culture and the Japanese people to cloud judgement. Too often the crimes committed by the Japanese during WWII are overlooked and forgotten about. Bix has written an excellent biography of Hirohito. It is a biography that is not afraid to be critical of the Japanese, which so many writers seem to be. Bix makes it clear what Hirohito's role in WWII was. Yes, I do not think he made the correct assessment on Truman, and yes I do not think his chapters on the occupation are as good as some others, but do not let these little things stop you from reading this book. If you like Japanese and WWII history you will enjoy this book.

This book is money and time well spent.

In addition, anyone who liked this book should check out the historical novel "The Emperor's General" by James Webb. It is a historical novel of the relationship between MacArthur and Hirohito. It is a great novel...I highly recommend it!

The Showa Dictatorship was responsbile for the deaths of millions of people. It treated prisoners of wars with tortures as foul as any in Dachau or Koloyma. It was a pioneer in forced prostitution and mass rape. Thousands of Chinese prisoners alone were slaughtered in experiments to create one of the world's most advanced biological weapons. Yet the commerical, political and intellectual elites were given the equivalent of a slap on the wrist and reintegrated into the new Japanese democracy. And no one benefited more from this peculiar brand of Conservative Mercy that the son of heaven, the divine emperor Hirohito. Herbert Bix provides an invaluable account of the man and his regime.

Since the end of the war the official story from the palace was that Hirohito was nothing but a constitutional monarch who had no choice but to ratify the increasingly insane and fanatical measures of his militaristic ministers. This was the view propogated by General Douglas MacArthur and by biographers such as Nicholas Mosley and Stephen Large. After reading this book such views will no longer be tenable. Now it is important to point out that Hirohito was not like Hitler or Mussolini. Whereas those two had an insane lust for power, Hirohito was self-effacing in the extreme. Slightly spastic, very short and awkwardly dressed, had Hirohito not been a prince he might have made a compotent biology instructor at a second rate community college. Hirohito was not an absolute dictator. But he was the most powerful player in a polyocracy involving the army, fascist militarists, business elites, aristocrats and parliamentary politicians.

What does Bix specifically allege? Bix points out that Hirohito's education was consistently authoritarian and undemocratic. None of his advisors and politicians were democrats, and the "Taisho democracy," consisted of two identical pro-business parties that vied with each other in pro-imperial fervor and suppressed all republican and leftist sentiment. Clearly something was rotten with Japanese society when thousands of harmless Koreans were lynched after the great Tokyo earthquake in the mid-twenties. Hirohito was not in the vanguard for aggression and war (his brother were even worse), but he approved every step from the Mukden incident to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Moreover he showed no outrage, subversion and aggression committed in his name. His coronation reinforced his autocratic power and the myth of his divinity. Almost certainly aware of the rape of Nanking, but doing nothing to stop it, Hirohito promoted the militarists and fascists who accelerated the pace towards dictatorship and war. Whereas Mosley says Hirohito never forgave General Tojo for deceiving him about military defeats, Bix provides a good case that Tojo was in fact Hirohito's favorite prime minister. He certainly took the inititative in making his prime minister, when both the outgoing prime minister and Tojo himself recommended a more moderate person in the crucial months before Pearl Harbor. Once the Pacific War was underway Hirohito constantly pushed not for peace but for further offensives. Indeed he was culpably blind in failing to see that after Midway Japan was condemned to slow but certain defeat. Moreover Hirohito shared the responsibility for delaying Japan's surrender for half a year as he and others pursued chimerical hopes of winning a final decisive battle.

Throughout the war the Japanese had been starved by their leaders in pursuit of victory, they had been ordered to committ mass suicide at Okinawa and Saipan and after the surrender the government proposed recruiting hundreds of women to serve as official state prostitutes for the American army. Yet after the defeat Hirohito and his circle blamed the Japanese people and their "selfishness" and "individualism," and not himself and his ministers for being completely out of their depth. Bix details how Hirohito, the prosecution and MacArthur occupying force helped fix the Tokyo War Crimes Trial so that he would not be implicated. Bix goes on to discuss his opposition to the most democratic and pacific aspects of the new Japanese goverment, while the media played up a false image of him as a progressive and constitutional monarch.

Bix's book is not perfect. It is somewhat repetitive, and unlike Ian Kershaw's volume on Hitler, it cannot serve as a history of the protagonist's country. There are only brief discussions of the spread of emperor worship, and we have a much simpler portrait of Japanese public opinion than what we have about Germany. A person reading this book would not know why democracy was so limited and why there was so little resistance within Japan to its imperialism and aggression; nor would they know there was so little outrage at its crimes. But in clarifying the emperor's role Bix has moved us beyond apologetic accounts and moved forward to new issues. For we have to understand that the Showa Dictatorship was not just a cruel regime. It was an evil regime, fully worthy of sustained moral analysis as Hitler's and Stalin's and as much a symbol of poisoned modernity as those two. And when we see the joy of exterminating others in the mirror of alternative modernities, we cannot be sure that we are immune from the Showa's Dictatorship's temptations.

I always find it fascinating when I reach a completely different conclusion than a noted awards organization like the Pulitzers. But after slogging through over half of Herbert Bix's book, "HIROHITO AND THE MAKING OF MODERN JAPAN," I cannot imagine how this book received much of any award.

I guess at some level it is not a complete washout. The book is obviously meticulously researched. As a reference for academics, it will probably have real value. But in terms of simple readability, it is a disaster.

For me, it seems Bix has been immersed in Japan and Japanese culture for way too long. Like a lot of experts, he tends to speak in a bit of a short hand without remembering that it makes it difficult for laymen to follow.

For better or worse, most Americans are not terribly familiar with Japanese history and culture, especially as it relates to pre-WWII. So the huge cast of characters that Bix throws at you is overwhelming because most readers are not going to know who any of them are. His introductions to each of these characters tend to be very brief and there are so many of them (and so many names that are all alien to begin with) that it becomes almost dizzying. You are constantly flipping over to the index to figure out who someone is that hasn't been mentioned in 50 pages.

Cabinets rise and fall with blinding speed and without much explanation for how or why. Japanese cultural points are raised without deep explanation and without reinforcement later in the text. And the prose itself is leaden. It is not a read so much as a slog. You endure it more than you enjoy it.

More bothersome is that Bix has a clear agenda in the biography. His take? Hirohito was a conniving jerk who misled everyone about his role during the war. Other than being an upright family man, Bix's Hirohito is a Machiavellian slimeball constantly making poor choices and then finding ways to foist the consequences on others.

Now for all I know, this may be totally accurate. But the text reads as almost seething in its anger. I have no issue with a writer presenting an opinion and a point of view. That is a role of the historian and the biographer--to interpret the facts and put them into context. But Bix never lets it go to simply tell the story of his subject. He is constantly slamming Hirohito. Again, his criticism may be sound. It probably is. But it so pervasive that at some point you begin to wonder whether or not Bix is presenting all the facts. Based on the enormous "notes" section of this book, he probably is, but at some point he just needed to tell the story. If the problems and hypocrisy in Hirohito's life are as pronounced as he says they are, that will likely come through to the reader without having to ham-handedly beat the man page after page. It reads less like a biography and more like a polemic.

The only reason I am giving this any stars at all is because I feel I am obligated to give some credit to the sheer depth of research that is evident in the work. This is truly a scholarly effort in its research and I suspect the underlying source documents cited will make this a great reference for future scholars seeking information on the subject. But I found the writing itself to be bad and the Bix's anti-Hirohito agenda to just be overwhelming.

This is an important story that needs to be told. But Bix's work is not the book that gets it done. Obviously, based on the accolades this book received from critics, other readers and Pulitzer committee puts me in the minority but I really am left wondering what book they read when they heaped their praise on this work.

Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan is a well-researched, historical account of the Japanese emperor during World War II, Hirohito.

The author postulates that far from being an ineffective leader dominated by his military advisors and driven to war against his better judgment; he was in fact a driver behind the war and agreed in pursuing the Divine Japanese spirit to the end, even when countless hundreds of thousands of his own citizens, civilian and military were dying unnecessarily.

I highly recommend this to any one interested in the background to modern Japan or Japanese history.