num_pages: 329
description: From the dust "American Occupation aims to change the Japanese right back to the roots of their culture. Is not Japan, perhaps, a mirror throwing back at perceptive Americans a reflection of our best and worst, and are we not trying to change the reflection before we change the reflector?..... In 1945, Helen Mears won a literary fellowship for a projected book on post-war Japan. With much new material gathered on the spot in 1946, she has written a searching and fearless study, which has gone beyond the scope of her original plan to become a history of our relations with Japan before, during and since the war. Why did a nation dedicated to seclusion and peace for two hundred years, until 1853, become the focus of international disturbance in 1941? What, exactly did Japan do in Korea, Manchuria, and the Co-Prosperity Sphere, and why did she do it? What was her crime, and does our "punishment" fit that crime?........"
title: Mirror for Americans: Japan