Blowback, Second Edition: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire

This is the best analysis of Japan’s foreign policy and how it uses its wealth to achieve its objectives.

Dower, John. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999.

The single most important book on the critical years of the Allied occupation, when the United States forged and Japan accepted its postwar status as America’s most valuable satellite.

Hall, Ivan P. Cartels of the Mind: Japan’s Intellectual Closed Shop. New York: W. W. Norton, 1998.

The most serious study by a genuine “Japan hand” of why the assumptions of political and economic convergence between Japan and the United States are nonsense. A graceful, well-written statement of what a foreigner must know if he or she plans to deal with Japan.

http://www.jpri.org/

Web site of the Japan Policy Research Institute. Contains over a hundred research reports, including papers on Japan’s discrimination against foreigners teaching in its universities, the problems of Okinawa, and Japan’s industrial policies, among many different subjects.

McVeigh, Brian J. The Nature of the Japanese State: Rationality and Rituality. London: Routledge, 1998.

An anthropologist analyzes the bureaucratization of Japanese life and offers an exciting essay on why Japanese politics will never resemble American politics.

Schaller, Michael. Altered States: The United States and Japan Since the Occupation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Diplomatic history at its best by a seasoned hand. Includes details on the decisions by Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson to give secret financial help to Japan’s conservative politicians.

Smith, Patrick. Japan: A Reinterpretation. New York: Vintage Books, 1998. Paperbound.

For readers looking for an introduction to Japan, this is the best there is. Smith takes Japanese culture seriously. A beautifully written book.

Korea

Amsden, Alice. Asia’s Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

The classic study of how South Korea got rich and the crisis it caused for orthodox American economic theory.

Bandow, Doug. Tripwire: Korea and U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World. Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 1996.

A prescient analysis by a former special assistant to President Reagan on why we have stayed too long in Korea and what we ought to do about it.

Cumings, Bruce. The Origins of the Korean War. 2 vols. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981, 1990.

A tour de force on the era in Korean history that Americans know nothing about and would prefer to ignore: 1945 to 1950. Cumings’s meticulous research has altered the “received wisdom” on the Korean War.

Hart-Landsberg, Martin. Korea: Division, Reunification, and U.S. Foreign Policy. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998. Paperbound.

An excellent, evenhanded account of why Korea remains divided. Includes chapters on the relevance of the German experience of reunification to Korea.

http://www.kimsoft.com/korea.htm

The indispensable Web site for materials on the role of the United States in Korea, including archives on the Cheju uprising of 1948 and Tim Shorrock’s U.S. government documents on the Kwangju massacre, which he obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

Lee, Jae-eui. Kwangju Diary: Beyond Death, Beyond the Darkness of the Age. Los Angeles: UCLA Asian Pacific Monograph Series, 1999.

A translation into English of the most important Korean book on the Kwangju massacre, by a participant who was taken prisoner and tortured by the Republic of Korea army. With additional essays by Bruce Cumings and Tim Shorrock.

Oberdorfer, Don. The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1997.

A seasoned Washington Post journalist on the two Koreas. Oberdorfer is outstanding on the 1994 crisis over North Korean nuclear experiments.

Shapiro, Michael. The Shadow in the Sun. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1990.

Powerful observations of South Korea in the last years of Chun Doo-hwan, including details on the legacy of the Kwangju massacre.

Okinawa

Field, Norma. In the Realm of a Dying Emperor. New York: Pantheon Books, 1991.

Field’s chapter on Shoichi Chibana, pp. 33–104, is the best introduction in English to the injustices inflicted on Okinawa by Japan and the United States.

Johnson, Chalmers, ed. Okinawa: Cold War Island. Cardiff, Calif.: Japan Policy Research Institute, 1999.

A collection of essays on Okinawa by such authorities as Masahide Ota, Kozy Amemiya, Koji Taira, Steve Rabson, Michael Millard, Patrick Smith, Carolyn Bowen Francis, Shunji Taoka, Masayuki Sasaki, and Gavan