The Wages of Guilt Memories of War in Germany and Japan

Between the early 1930s and 1945, Germany and Japan both embarked on extremely destructive colonial adventures. This book looks at the ways in which the Germans and the Japanese have come to terms with the past and investigates the painful realities of living with guilt - and of denying it. Ian Buruma encounters people whose honesty in confronting the past is brave, and others who astonish by the ingenuity of their evasion of responsibility. In Auschwitz, Berlin, Hiroshima and Tokyo he explores the contradictory attitudes of scholars, politicians and survivors, and visits some grotesque monuments, such as the Japanese Shinto museum commemorating the kamikaze pilots.