"Excellent ... will surely stimulate a hot debate among historians, veterans, politicians, grass roots nuclear protest groups, and ordinary citizens from both the Japanese and American sides. --H-Net Reviews, July 2001 (Read full review)

"[Orr] offers a compelling explanation for the peculiar, distorted form that moral argumentation surrounding war responsibility has taken." --H-Net Reviews, November 2001 (Read full review)

"A valuable resource for scholars working on post-war Japanese politics. The accessible prose also would recommend sections of this book for teaching on specific topics related to Japanese post-war national identity." --Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, October 2002

"A balanced, carefully written and highly relevant contribution to the understanding of how the manipulation of myth and memory shapes political policy." --The Daily Yomiuri, 18 November 2001

"Thought-provoking ... [Orr's] broad concern with public memory strikes a chord with other recent works." --International History Review, March 2002

"A compelling explanation for the peculiar, distorted form that moral argumentation surrounding war responsibility has taken. This is a politically and intellectually courageous study that arrives at balanced, dispassionate, illuminating, and persuasive conclusions." --Gary D. Allinson, University of Virginia

"Required reading for scholars of nationalism, modern Japanese culture, society and politics, and for anyone who wishes to understand the challenges and possibilities of democracy in contemporary Japan." --Kevin M. Doak, Georgetown University

This is the first systematic, historical inquiry into the emergence of "victim consciousness" (higaisha ishiki) as an essential component of Japanese pacifist national identity after World War II. In his meticulously crafted narrative and analysis, the author reveals how postwar Japanese elites and American occupying authorities collaborated to structure the parameters of remembrance of the war, including the notion that the emperor and his people had been betrayed and duped by militarists. He goes on to explain the Japanese reliance on victim consciousness through a discussion of the ban-the-bomb movement of the mid-1950s, which raised the prominence of Hiroshima as an archetype of war victimhood and brought about the selective focus on Japanese war victimhood; the political strategies of three self-defined war victim groups (A-bomb victims, repatriates, and dispossessed landlords) to gain state compensation and hence valorization of their war victim experiences; shifting textbook narratives that reflected contemporary attitudes and structured future generations' understanding of the war; and three classic antiwar novels and films that contributed to the shaping of a "sentimental humanism" that continues to leave a strong imprint on the collective Japanese conscience.<

James J. Orr teaches in the Department of East Asian Studies at Bucknell University.