Richard Powers is an American novelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology. His novel The Echo Maker won the 2006 National Book Award for Fiction. He has also won many other awards over the course of his career, including a MacArthur Fellowship. As of 2018, Powers has published twelve novels and has taught at the University of Illinois and Stanford University. He won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Overstory.
The Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) was the title held by General Douglas MacArthur during the Allied occupation of Japan following World War II. It issued SCAP Directives to the Japanese government, aiming to suppress its "militaristic nationalism". The position was created at the start of the occupation of Japan on August 14, 1945.
Jane Smiley is an American novelist. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992 for her novel A Thousand Acres (1991).
John W. Dower is an American author and historian. His 1999 book Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II won the U.S. National Book Award for Nonfiction, the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, the Bancroft Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Mark Lynton History Prize, and the John K. Fairbank Prize of the American Historical Association.
Eric Foner is an American historian. He writes extensively on American political history, the history of freedom, the early history of the Republican Party, African-American biography, Reconstruction, and historiography, and has been a member of the faculty at the Columbia University Department of History since 1982. He is the author of several popular textbooks. According to the Open Syllabus Project, Foner is the most frequently cited author on college syllabi for history courses.
The Pulitzer Prizes for 2000 were announced on April 10, 2000.
Frances FitzGerald is an American journalist and historian, who is primarily known for Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam (1972), an account of the Vietnam War. It was a bestseller that won the Pulitzer Prize, Bancroft Prize, and National Book Award.
Hajime Kawakami was a Japanese Marxist economist of the Taishō and early Shōwa periods.
The Instructions for the Battlefield was a pocket-sized military code issued to soldiers in the Imperial Japanese forces on 8 January 1941 in the name of then-War Minister Hideki Tojo. It was in use at the outbreak of the Pacific War.
Tina Rosenberg is an American journalist and the author of three books. For one of them, The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism (1995), she won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction and the National Book Award for Nonfiction.
Our Job in Japan was a United States military training film made in 1945, shortly after World War II. It is the companion to the more famous Your Job In Germany. The film was aimed at American troops about to go to Japan to participate in the 1945–1952 Allied occupation, and presents the problem of turning the militarist state into a peaceful democracy. The film focused on the Japanese military officials who had used the traditional religion of Shinto, as well as the educational system, to take over power, control the populace, and wage aggressive war.
Since 1980, the Los Angeles Times has awarded a set of annual book prizes. The Prizes currently have nine categories: biography, current interest, fiction, first fiction, history, mystery/thriller, poetry, science and technology, and young adult fiction. In addition, the Robert Kirsch Award is presented annually to a living author with a substantial connection to the American West. It is named in honor of Robert Kirsch, the Los Angeles Times book critic from 1952 until his death in 1980 whose idea it was to establish the book prizes.
Jun Kawada was a Japanese tanka poet and entrepreneur active during the Shōwa period of Japan.
Gandhi's Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence is a 1969 book about Mahatma Gandhi by the German-born American developmental psychologist Erik H. Erikson. It won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction and the U.S. National Book Award in category Philosophy and Religion.
Shattered God: A Diary of a Demobilized SoldierKudakareta kami: aru fukuinhei no shuki. By Watanabe Kiyoshi. Published by Iwanami Shoten Publishing.
Kumazawa Hiromichi, also known as the "Kumazawa emperor," was a Japanese businessman and Buddhist priest from Nagoya who publicly disputed the legitimacy of Emperor Hirohito's bloodline in the period shortly after the end of the Second World War. He claimed to be the 19th direct descendant of Emperor Go-Kameyama.
Harold Gould Henderson (1889–1974) was an American academic, art historian and Japanologist. He was a Columbia University professor for twenty years. From 1948 through 1952, he was the President of the Japan Society in New York, and in 1968 he cofounded the Haiku Society of America.
The Shibuya incident was a violent confrontation which occurred in June 1946 between rival gangs near the Shibuya Station in Tokyo, Japan. The years after World War II saw Japan as a defeated nation and the Japanese people had to improvise in many aspects of daily life. In the chaos of the post-war recovery large and very lucrative black markets opened throughout Japan. Various gangs fought for control over them. There were also many non-Japanese "third nationals" in post-war Japan. These "third nationals" or "third-country people" were former subjects of the Empire of Japan whose citizenship then transferred to other countries like China and Korea. The Shibuya incident involved former Japanese citizens from the Japanese province of Formosa fighting against native Japanese Yakuza gangs. After the fight, the Chinese nationalist government stepped forward to defend the Formosans.
The New Press is an independent non-profit public-interest book publisher established in 1992 by André Schiffrin and Diane Wachtell, publishing many books with a left-wing political viewpoint.
The Civil Censorship Department was created within the Civil Intelligence Section of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers. It exercised considerable influence over the operation and administration of the American Occupation of Japan after World War II.
