A Cultural History of Postwar Japan

This book is a political and cultural history of the early postwar Japan aiming at exploring how the perception and cultural values of everyday life in the country changed along with the rise of the kasutori culture.

Oliviero Frattolillo is Associate Professor of East Asian history at the Department of Politics, Roma Tre University. He is the author of Reassessing Japan's Cold War: Ikeda Hayato's Foreign Politics and Proactivism During the 1960s (2020), Diplomacy in Japan-EU Relations: From the Cold War to the Post-Bipolar Era (2013), and Interwar Japan Beyond the West: The Search for a New Subjectivity in World History (2012), and co-editor of Japan and the Great War (2015). He is co-editor of the book series New Directions in East Asian History (Palgrave Macmillan, Shanghai). He is Visiting Professor at the History Department, University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), Philadelphia, and Visiting Fellow at the Department of Law, Keio University, Tokyo.

Introduction. 1. Japan's modern/modernized subjectivity 2. Americanized Japanese? Questioning the unquestionable 3. To forget or not forget? Japan as the place of desire 4. Portraits of decadence in 'Moonshine Japan'. Epilogue - Could you call us human and humanist, please?