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, and in the course of which they committed monstrous war crimes. As he travels through both countries, to Berlin and Tokyo, Hiroshima and Auschwitz, he encounters people who are remarkably honest in confronting the past and others who astonish by their evasions of responsibility, some who wish to forget the past and others who wish to use it as a warning against the resurgence of militarism. Buruma explores these contrasting responses to the war and the two countries’ very different ways of memorializing its atrocities, as well as the ways in which political movements, government policies, literature, and art have been shaped by its shadow. Today, seventy years after the end of the war, he finds that while the Germans have for the most part coped with the darkest period of their history, the Japanese remain haunted by historical controversies that should have been resolved long ago. Sensitive yet unsparing, complex and unsettling, this is a profound study of how people face up to or deny terrible legacies of guilt and shame.

First study of the fascinating parallelism that characterizes developments in Japan and Germany by one of Germany's leading Japan specialists. With the founding of their respective national states, the Meiji Empire in 1869 and the German Reich in 1871, Japan and Germany entered world politics. Since then both countries have developed in strikingly similar ways, and it is not surprising that these two became close allies during the Second World War, although in the end this proved a "fatal attraction."

Now available in English, this three-volume work focusing on the wide-ranging political, military, economic, technological and social interconnections and interconnectedness between the two ‘new powers’in the first half of the twentieth century was originally published by University of Tokyo Press in 2006 and marks an important milestone in collaboration at the highest level on this subject matter between German and Japanese scholars.

Focusing on the post war reconstruction of the education systems in Japan and Germany under U.S. military occupation after World War II, this book offers a comparative historical investigation of education reform policies in these two war ravaged and ideologically compromised countries. While in Japan large-scale reforms were undertaken swiftly after the end of the war, the U.S. zone in Germany maintained most of the traditional aspects of the German education system. Why did Japan so readily accept ideas and values developed in the allied countries while Germany resisted? Masako Shibata explores this question, arguing that the role of the university and the pattern of elite formation, which can be traced back to the period of the formation of Meiji Japan and the Kaiserreich, created the conditions for differing reactions from educational leaders in each country; this had a decisive impact on the proposed reforms. By examining these reactions through a sociological, cultural, and historical frame, an explanation emerges. Japan and Germany under the U.S. Occupation will prove to be a valuable resource both to scholars of history and education reform.

When U-234 slipped out of a Norwegian harbor in March 1945 destined for Japan, it was loaded with some of the most technically advanced weaponry and electronic detection devices of the era, along with a select group of officials. En route, word came that Germany had surrendered, and the boat's commander suddenly found himself with a rogue submarine, a precious assortment of cargo, and two Japanese naval officers still at war. This dramatic account of the voyage offers an intriguing look at the individuals involved. One of these individuals was Luftwaffe General Ulrich Kessler, who was a member of Von Stauffeberg's Valkyrie conspiracy to assassinate of Hitler. Kessler was aboard U-234 to escape the wrath of Hitler, because he had been tabbed by Von Stauffeberg to replace Hermann Goering as the commander of the Luftwaffe. Scalia draws on U.S. Navy interrogation records, European and Japanese archives, and interviews with former U-234 crew members and other principals to develop a full portrait of the group. He also evaluates the technology of the armament on board, which included 560 kg. of uranium oxide, whose presence continues to provoke questions about a Nazi plan to build an atom bomb in Japan.

Alliances between sovereign states are among the least stable political associations. Despite professions of fidelity and common purpose, most are effective for only short periods, and only as long as it suits their interests. The German-Japanese alliance of World War II was not so much a marriage of convenience as a long and uneasy engagement. It was maintained because breaking the engagement would have reduced the prestige of each nation-state.Germany and Japan each found the existence and policies of the other convenient. From 1933-1945, both powers challenged the international order; other than this, nothing else united Germany and Japan. Even while they shared some of the same opponents, German and Japanese antagonism toward the Allies involved different objects of contention and questions of timing. Consequently, coordination of German and Japanese policies did not follow.Johanna Menzel Meskill argues that the German-Japanese alliance failed, not only because each power failed separately to attain its goals, but because as allies the powers failed to take advantage of their association. The failure resulted to a large extent from the discordance between their political goals and the means necessary to attain them. This work in diplomatic history is a careful analysis of presuming identities in a world of diplomatic differences.In a new introduction to the book, Thomas Nowotny looks back on the alliance from a historical perspective. He concludes that both parties overestimated the potency and effectiveness of their military power. Like many before and some after, they more generally subscribed to the offensive use of military power and effectiveness that the history of the twentieth centery has proven unwarranted.

Cognitive-strategic capabilities of a country are decisive for overcoming the strong path dependence in climate-related policies and to achieve ecological and economic modernization. This is the result of a unique comparison approach focusing on four highly intertwined policy areas (Automobiles, Nuclear Energy, Renewables and Rare Earth) in Japan and Germany. Both countries have in principle sufficient economic, technological and institutional capacities for an ecological transformation, but they are lacking an integrated policy strategy to mobilize and organize the existing capacities in favor of structural changes. The focused four policy areas are analyzed in depth and compared by experts from political science.

The history of German medicine has undergone intense scrutiny because of its indelible connection to Nazi crimes. What is less well known is that Meiji Japan adopted German medicine as its official model in 1869. In Doctors of Empire, Hoi-eun Kim recounts the story of the almost 1,200 Japanese medical students who rushed to German universities to learn cutting-edge knowledge from the world leaders in medicine, and of the dozen German physicians who were invited to Japan to transform the country’s medical institutions and education. Shifting fluently between German, English, and Japanese sources, Kim’s book uses the colourful lives of these men to examine the impact of German medicine in Japan from its arrival to the pinnacle of its influence and its abrupt but temporary collapse at the outbreak of the First World War. Transnational history at its finest, Doctors of Empire not only illuminates the German origins of modern medical science in Japan but also reinterprets the nature of German imperialism in East Asia.

The first English-language study of German-Japanese interwar relations to employ sources in both languages.

Can Germany and Japan do more militarily to uphold the international order? Since the end of World War II, Germany and Japan have been the most reluctant of all major U.S. allies to take on military responsibilities. Given their histories, this reluctance certainly is understandable. But because of their size and economic importance, Germany and Japan are the most important U.S. allies in Europe and in East Asia, respectively, and their long-term reluctance to share the defense burden has become a perennial source of frustration for Washington. The potential security roles of Germany and Japan are becoming increasingly important given the uncertainty, indeed volatility, of today’s international environment. Under President Trump, friction among allies over burden-sharing is more intense than ever before. Meanwhile, the security environments in Europe and Asia have deteriorated because of the resurgence of a belligerent Russia under Vladimir Putin, the steady rise of an increasingly assertive China, and North Korea’s worrisome acquisition of nuclear weapons. Partly in response to these developments, Germany and Japan in recent years have boosted their security efforts, mainly by increasing defense spending and taking on a somewhat broader range of military missions. Even so, because of their cultures of anti-militarism resistance remains strong in both countries to rebuilding the military and assuming more responsibility for sustaining regional or even global peace. In Reluctant Warriors, a team of noted international experts critically examines how and why Germany and Japan have modified their military postures since 1990 so far, and assesses how far the countries still have to go—and why. The contributors also highlight the risks the United States takes if it makes too simplistic a demand for the two countries to “do more.”