Japan’s Postwar History

Japan’s Postwar History presents the first integrated analysis of the social, economic, and political changes that Japan has experienced since 1945. Drawing on more than three decades of firsthand experience with the country, Gary D. Allinson depicts a dynamic, often turbulent history and illuminates its impact on individuals, families, and communities.Between 1932 and 1952, war, devastation, and foreign occupation caused significant changes in Japan. However, the society that emerged during the 1950s still resembled its prewar predecessor in many ways, according to Allinson. Thereafter, by exploiting a fortunate combination of domestic and international conditions the Japanese people ushered in twenty years of extensive development. Growth created problems as well as profits and imposed some wrenching adjustments after the world economic crises of 1973 and 1979. Nonetheless, Japanese society steadily assimilated the benefits of affluence, Allinson argues. Until worldwide recession drew Japan into a severe economic downturn in the late 1980s, it continued to adapt to the social and political demands of a rich nation enmeshed in a global economy. By the mid1990s, Japan had reached the end of a cycle of historical change. Plagued with uncertainty and striving to find a formula for regeneration, Japan once again found itself confronting the dilemmas of inequality, instability, and insecurity. Author BioRGary D. Allinson is Ellen Bayard Weedon Professor of East Asian Studies at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Political Dynamics in Contemporary Japan (also from Cornell), The Columbia Guide to Modern Japanese History, Suburban Tokyo, and Japanese Urbanism.