Review by Choice Review
This slender book by SUNY Buffalo professor Nozaki is about as compact and insightful a study of Japanese postwar historiography as one could ever desire. Nozaki depends broadly on Foucault in exploring the "multiple games of truth" concerning 20th-century Japanese history. Rather than producing a vague, generalizing study, she organizes her treatment around the writings and struggles of the preeminent historian in the title. Ienaga is quoted extensively and movingly on his impressive motivations, and Nozaki throughout examines with high levels of rigor the clash of ideas about the nature of history. Each of the major crises in the historiography of the postwar years (the US use of the atomic bombs, Nanjing, the Okinawa suicides, the "comfort women" issue) receives careful attention in the three major contexts Nozaki establishes at the outset: textbooks and the national educational bureaucracy; the nature of historical evidence and inquiry in the Ienaga context; and the court tests between a conservative movement often represented by the government and its opponents (among whom Nozaki clearly is one). The writing is clear throughout, the argument vigorous, and the use of evidence impeccable. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. R. B. Lyman Jr. emeritus, Simmons College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
