John Dower is one of the preeminent historians of modern Japanese history, in particular on the Showa period.
This book, Japan in War and Peace (1993), by him, has 11 essays written by him over 15 years preceding 1993.
They all deal with the legacies of the Pacific War and the American occupation led by General Douglas MacArthur.
All the essays and the introduction are very well written.
Showa is the name given to Hirohito’s reign of 64 years. The emperor after him is Akihito, whose reign is called the Heisei period.
The usage of the name “reigns” was started for ideological reasons after 1868 as a counterweight to God and Christianity in the West to hold the Japanese people together ideologically.
Dower posits that because MacArthur shielded Hirohito from abdication and from a war crimes trial, basic questions of political and moral responsibility for the atrocities of the Pacific War were easily ignored.
This is a book to read slowly and to savour.
Dower’s Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Aftermath of World War II, published in 1999, is equally good and should be read to see how the Japanese coped with and accepted occupation by the US.