Seventy-Two Years Ago: Pearl Harbor And Japanese Politics

Today's New York Times prints an op-ed article by historian Eri Hotta addressing similarities and differences between today's Japan and that of seventy-two years ago. Her article is very much worth reading. I also look forward to reading her book: Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy.

Japan in 1941 was not a military dictatorship or a totalitarian regime, and it never became one. Neither was it a democracy. It was, instead, a society built on strong networks of obligation, with decision making by consensus rather than by majority vote. The persistent belief that Japan in 1941 was a military dictatorship grows out of a deep misunderstanding of the way Japanese society worked. Ruth Benedict's wartime study of Japanese society, The Crysanthemum And The Sword, might have deepened our understanding, but it came out too late and has never informed our retrospective understanding of events leading to war. I look forward to reading Ms. Hotta's two books on the period.