"Japan was a bright comet suddenly tracing a path across the sky, exploding into the vision of an outside world that for centuries had hardly taken notice of it" (Duus 3). While most nations to the west of the land of the rising sun took time to reach their position as a superpower, Japan...

Emperor Hirohito ruled over Japan from 1926 until his death in 1989. He saw Japan through World War II, its defeat and resurrection from the ashes to become a world-renowned industrial and economic power. He was the grandson of the famed Emperor Meiji, who was generally considered to be one of the b...