In" Embracing Defeat " a magisterial and beautifully historian at the Massachussets Institution of Technology, throws light into dark corner of Japan between August 1945 and April 1952 and tries to assess border meaning of experiance in the context of mordern Japanese history . In a formulation reminiscent of Eric Hobsbawm’s shorts 20th century" idea, he sums up his perspective in terms of " a cycle of recent history than began in the lat 1920’s and essentially ended in 1989.