Numerous books on the topic of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been published hitherto. Yet, no one has written about the fire and atomic bombings in the context of the U.S. justification of the crime of indiscriminate bombings and its relationship to Japanâs political exploitation of the atomic bombing to cover up Hirohitoâs war responsibility. Further, no one has analyzed the fundamental contradiction in Japanâs peace constitution between the concealment of Hirohitoâs war crimes and the responsibility of the U.S. Readers will learn how Japanese and U.S. official war memories were crafted to justify their respective wartime performances, exposing the flaws and failing of present-day democracy in Japan and the U.S. This book also explores how Japanese people could potentially create a truly powerful cultural memory of war, utilizing various forms of artwork including Japanâs traditional performing art, Noh. It should appeal to many readersâhistorians (both modern American and Japanese history specialists), constitutional scholars, students, peace and anti-nuclear activists, intellectuals as well as general readers. âJapanese historian Yuki Tanaka presents here his life work on the grand subjects of Japanese war responsibility, the US-Japan relationship, US and Japanese war crimes and the emperor system. Matching meticulous archival research with personal and political advocacy, he concludes by calling upon Japanese and American civil society to confront the present-day Japanese state and inter-state system as a fundamentally flawed, seven-decade long design of obfuscation, concealment, and manipulation. It is also, he argues, increasingly precarious. Tanakaâs radical, wide-ranging thesis deserves to be read.â âGavan McCormack, Emeritus Professor, Australian National University âThis fascinating book caps decades of careful thinking about why nominally democratic Japan seems so undemocratic and so trapped in self-destructive foreign policies today. The author zeros in on postwar Japanese and American government collaborations to explain this phenomenon, including joint evasion of responsibility for bombing civilians during World War II, when, ironically, they themselves were bitter enemies. This is a genuinely thought-provoking contribution with many arresting observations based on little-known research about such topics as the emperorâs place in the postwar Japanese political system, the 1945 surrender decision, Japanâs history of empire, and the politics of nuclear weapons in postwar Japan.â âLaura Hein, the Harold H. and Virginia Anderson Professor of History, Northwestern University, USA