Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II

"Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol", which I talked about in a thread recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10146846 Before that, it was "Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II". I decided to read it because I saw a kinda not great movie about the period immediately after surrender, and I realized it was something I knew almost nothing about. It's good, but relatively academic; I cared about how the Japanese publishing industry and their literature changed over the time period, but not that much. It is worth it, though, as I knew very little about Japan in this period. Something that drives this home is that for Japan, "the war" for the Japanese people essentially lasted from 1931 (when Japan invaded Manchuria) to 1952 (when the US occupation of Japan ended) - I had never thought of it that way before.