Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan

Herbert Bix's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography arguing that Emperor Hirohito was an active participant in Japan's wartime aggression — overturning the postwar myth of the passive monarch.

The revisionist Hirohito: using Japanese primary sources, Bix documents Hirohito's active role in strategic military decisions, his endorsement of chemical weapons use in China, and his awareness of atrocities. The MacArthur deal: to use Hirohito as an instrument of occupation, the U.S. deliberately constructed and promoted the 'passive emperor' myth — a historical deception that shaped Japanese war memory for decades. One of the most important WWII historical revisions.