One of the most demanding challenges for the historian of any country is to explain the underlying processes of history and national character, what the British historian A. J. P. Taylor referred to as “the profound forces,” that impel a nation along one course rather than another.1 Modern Japan’s history has been particularly difficult to explain and understand. Japan’s international behavior has fluctuated widely and wildly—from isolation to enthusiastic borrowing from foreign cultures, from emperor worship to democracy, from militarism to pacifism. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, when its leaders abruptly ended national isolation and undertook the reorganization of their institutions after the model of the West, Japan has been marked by its pendulum-like swings in national policy. None has been more dramatic than the 180-degree turn from a brutal imperialism to withdrawal from international politics and a sustained drive for commercial prowess after World War II.
