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by Ian Buruma

Ian_Buruma Asia English
  • ISBN: 0452011566
  • Category: History
  • Author: Ian Buruma
  • Subcategory: Asia
  • Other formats: doc lit azw docx
  • Language: English
  • Publisher: Plume (June 1, 1995)
  • Pages: 144 pages
  • FB2 size: 1708 kb
  • EPUB size: 1144 kb
  • Rating: 4.6
  • Votes: 506
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In this now classic book, internationally famed journalist Ian Buruma examines how Germany and Japan have attempted to come to terms with their conduct during World War II-a war that they aggressively began and humiliatingly lost.

In this now classic book, internationally famed journalist Ian Buruma examines how Germany and Japan have attempted to come to terms with their conduct during World War II-a war that they aggressively began and humiliatingly lost.

This absorbing and important book analyzes the ways that Germany and Japan have dealt with the question of guilt for their misdeeds in. .

This absorbing and important book analyzes the ways that Germany and Japan have dealt with the question of guilt for their misdeeds in World War II. The bottom line is that the Germans have done a much better job at remembering and atoning, both among themselves and with their neighbors. Japan may never fully face its past, he notes insightfully, until it is treated like an "adult" country, which would entail abandoning its dependent and unnatural security relationship with the United States.

In this highly original and now classic text, Ian Buruma explores and compares how Germany and Japan have attempted to come to terms with their violent pasts, and investigates the painful realities of living with guilt, and with its denial

In this highly original and now classic text, Ian Buruma explores and compares how Germany and Japan have attempted to come to terms with their violent pasts, and investigates the painful realities of living with guilt, and with its denial. As Buruma travels through both countries, he encounters people whose honesty in confronting their past is strikingly brave, and others who astonish by the ingenuity of their evasions of responsibility. In Auschwitz, Berlin, Hiroshima and Tokyo he explores the contradictory attitudes of scholars, politicians and survivors towards World War II and visits the.

The comparison of Germany and Japan with respect to their recent history as laid out in Buruma’s book throws a spotlight on various aspects of the psychology of German and Japanese population, while at the same time not falling into the easy trap of explaining everything with difference in the guilt culture. A book of great depth and broad insights everyone having even the slightest interest in these topics should read. This difference between (West) German and Japanese textbooks is not just a matter of detail; it shows a gap in perception. Ian Buruma, Wages of Guilt, Romance of the Ruins.

The Wages Of Guilt book. Buruma tackles the subject by looking at themes that go across both Germany and Japan: remembering, teaching, memorialising. And what he finds is that although there are major differences in the way that Germany and Japan look back on their war years, there are also some similarities.

The wages of guilt : memories of war in Germany and Japan, by Ian Buruma. Given these differences between Germany and Japan, one might have expected The Wages of Guilt to have been better received in the former country. In fact, the opposite was true

The wages of guilt : memories of war in Germany and Japan, by Ian Buruma. In fact, the opposite was true. Not only did the book sell more copies in Japan, but it got a more positive reception.

Published by Atlantic Books. Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan. From the publisher: In this highly original and now classic text, Ian Buruma explores and compares how Germany and Japan have attempted to come to terms with their violent pasts, and investigates the painful realities of living with guilt, and with its denial. As Buruma travels through both countries, he encounters people whose honesty in confronting their past is strikingly brave, and others who astonish by the.

The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and in Japan (1994). ISBN 978-0-452-01156-4.

Ian Buruma's The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan is a major work of comparative cultural history and similar in content to Hein and Seldon's engagement in Censoring History. The theme in this work is the memory of World War II and the complex and dissimilar uses Germany and Japan have employed. Excellent Rendering of Memory. com User, December 18, 2009. Buruma does an exemplary job of examining the respective.

Offering a uniquely new perspective on the pscyhes of Germany and Japan after World War II, an expert on those two countries' politics and history explores how each country dealt with its past and their legacies of guilt in light of the atrocities which were committed during the war.
Reviews about Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan (7):
Ffel
Comparing the attitudes of Japanese and Germans toward World War II, in retrospect. Burma, well known as a writer for the NY Review of Books and other intellectual publications, is somewhat speculative here, and the writing is not first-rate, but his interpretations are provocative. To me, he makes an especially illuminating distinction between how West Germans and Germans in the East DDR dealt with "German guilt" -- the Ossies felt less German than communist, he thinks -- the Soviets were anti-fascist from the start so the mythos was that DDR was cleaner than the West -- which opened yet another schism to paper over when reunification occurred after 1989. He also reflects that the Japanese are far less soul-searching about their wartime role and motives, indeed a retrospective glow has fueled Japanese nationalism and militarism in recent decades, the idea being that Japan was seeking an anti-colonial union of Asia (never mind atrocities of Nanking et al.)
Era
Great book!

As someone with a graduate degree in Global and International Studies, who has spent much of the last 10 years traveling/working/researching in over 60 countries, even I was really quite shocked talking to many Japanese during a recent several month trip there about their historical memory of World War 2. The general denial of wrongdoing, the semi-glorification of imperial militarism, the often bitter racism towards former imperial subjects such as Koreans, Chinese, and Filipinos, and the common ignorance of history was all deeply unsettling. This book skillfully provides the background to this situation and gives context for how this came to be. It mostly dismisses explanations that focus on religious/cultural differences (which always bothered me as they often seemed to reek of orientalism and racism) for why different axis powers have faced up to their pasts in such different ways and looks at how politics have shaped remembrance. Although I don't agree with all his points and was a bit bothered by sections of the concluding chapter, I have to admit that this was overall insightful and well written.
Zovaithug
This is a brilliant study of the different way in which Japan and Germany have dealt and are dealing with the memories of the atrocities committed by their countries during WWII. It's an in-depth study of the nature of and reasons for the current pacifism of the two countries, comparing politics, culture, history, etc. It is also in it's own way a page turner.
Samutilar
this is the best account of that era that i have ever read. I was born in belgium in 1938 and moved to england until 1945.All these years I have kept a vivid memory of the after war years. I am a huge fan of Ian Buruma and have read most of his writing!!!arlette brisson
Mavegelv
Interesting read contrasting Japanese and German responses to the war.
Riavay
Ian Buruma travels to Germany and Japan to see how they are dealing with their guilt over what happened in World War Two. In this well-paced and well-researched work, he shows how West and East Germany at least tried hard in their own ways to to explain to their populations what had happened. The Japanese chose to gloss over the atrocities and in this work at least, come off as highly unimpressive and ambiguous. Buruma makes the point that part of the problem was the U.S. decision to let the emperor stay in power and to forbid criticism of him. So the man the troops dedicated their battles to all through the war stayed on the throne, which made it difficult to persuade the nation that it should be guilty about its past. The only reason I give this four stars is because the author jumps back and forth too often and the result is chapters that are sometimes very fragmented.
นℕĨĈტℝ₦
Ian Buruma takes a look at the various ways in which the people of Germany and Japan have dealt with the legacy of the atrocities committed by their countries during World War II. His book was especially timely in the case of Germany because he began writing it shortly after the unification of the Federal Republic and the GDR, when discussion of Germany's past was widespread both at home and abroad. Buruma is also well qualified to comment on Japan because he lived there for many years and speaks the language.
To summarise, the "The Wages of Guilt" finds that the German people, at least in the western part, have been more ready to come to terms with their war legacy than the Japanese. There are Nazi sympathizers and Holacaust deniers aplenty in Germany, but they seem to be confined to the fringes. In Japan, however, rightist elements remain powerful and the official line is to portray the war as an economically driven power struggle in which any excesses committed by the armed forces occurred in the heat of battle, thus denying any similarity to the behaviour of the Nazis. Moreover, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are viewed as atrocities on par with any act committed by the Axis powers; racism and a perverted scientific curiosity are among the motives attributed to America in its decisions to drop the bombs. Buruma explores the efforts to re-examine the war through the prism of German and Japanese reactions to Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Nanking, the war crimes trials, etc. and the result is a troubling and thought provoking meditation on the power of history and the psychology of escape. Check this one out, it's worth a look.

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