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Tuesday, March 10, 2015

70 Years of Selective History after the Pacific War

http://www.theglobalist.com/70-years-of-selective-history-after-the-pacific-war/

70 Years of Selective History after the Pacific War

What are the prospects for the next 70?
By , March 10, 2015
In her movingly beautiful novel dealing with Japan from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s, “The Gods of Heavenly Punishment” (2014), author Jennifer Cody Epstein describes how people tended to divide life between “before” and “after”: before and after the war.
When I was living in Japan in the 1950s, I remember the coinage and frequent usage of the term “apure” – this was derived from the French term “après guerre” and was meant to convey the mood of the “new” Japan after 1945.
Already in his outstanding book, “Year Zero: A History of 1945″ (2013), Ian Buruma, dealing with both the Atlantic and the Pacific Wars, demonstrated how things were not that simple. http://www.theglobalist.com/70-years-of-selective-history-after-the-pacific-war/

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