Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan — Herbert Bix

Bix's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Hirohito challenges the postwar narrative — constructed largely by American occupation authorities in collaboration with the imperial household — that the emperor was a constitutional monarch who bore no responsibility for Japanese aggression. Drawing on Japanese sources, including recently declassified materials, he argues that Hirohito was an active participant in military and political decision-making throughout the 1930s and 1940s, and that the preservation of the imperial system after 1945 required a systematic falsification of the historical record.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award. 'A landmark work of historical revisionism. Bix has transformed our understanding of Japan's path to war.' — New York Times Book Review. 'Devastating and meticulously documented.' — Times Literary Supplement