No nation was more deeply affected by America's rise to world power than Japan. The US policy of unconditional surrender as part of its goal of a new world order led to the catastrophic end of the Asia Pacific War and the most intrusive international reconstruction of another nation in modern history. Democratic institutions were imposed on Japan and so, too, was a long-term military alliance when the Cold War broke out.
Within this complex historical tapestry, Jennifer Miller has traced a particular strand of thought in early postwar US-Japan relations in Cold War Democracy. Miller, a professor of American history at Dartmouth, finds a persistent and pervasive “psychological definition of democracy” (p. 56) as being a state of mind, rather than simply the governing structures and institutions of representative politics. In an impressively researched and insightful analysis that provides a fresh perspective on this critical period, she demonstrates...
