{"title":"Seishiro Sugihara","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"chiune-sugihara-and-japan-s-foreign-ministry-book-seishiro-sugihara-9780761819714","title":"Chiune Sugihara and Japan's Foreign Ministry","description":"When the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany partitioned Poland in September of 1939, thousands of Jews fled Poland into Lithuania and fled across the USR to Japan. With the help of Jan Zwartendijk, acting Dutch consul, and Chiune Sugihara, Japan's vice consul in Lithuania, the refugees obtained documents for their perilous escape from Nazi persecution. From Japan, many refugees moved on to Dutch-controlled Curacao or other final destinations. Decades after the war, and one year before his death in 1986, Sugihara was finally honored by Israel with the Righteous Among the Nations Award for the help he gave to the Jews in 1940. He also received the Raoul Wallenburg Award posthumously in 1990. However, in Japan little was known about Sugihara's heroic actions for more than five decades. The author, Seishiro Sugihara (no relation to Chiune), reveals a pattern of deception and obfuscation by Japan's foreign ministry to obstruct recognition of Sugihara's philanthropy. The Sugihara episode, the author contends, is only one in a long line of scandalous cover-ups which have plagued the Ministry, including its ill-fated Twenty-One Demands upon Nationalist China in 1915; and more infamously the failure of its Washington Embassy to follow orders and deliver the declaration of war on December 7, 1941 which resulted in the Pearl Harbor operation being stigmatized as a sneak attack. His book is the first to demonstrate that, while Japan's military was abolished during the Occupation, the Foreign Ministry secured its own future at the expense of Japan and the Japanese people, and deliberately and systematically placed Sugihara's act of kindness beyond public scrutiny.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49597670228241,"sku":"GOR012426354","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52451499540753,"sku":"NLS9780761819714","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0761819711.jpg?v=1751106935"},{"product_id":"between-incompetence-and-culpability-book-seishiro-sugihara-9780761807780","title":"Between Incompetence and Culpability","description":"This study of the Pearl Harbor attack clarifies the debate in two important ways: first, it definitively exposes who delayed Japan's notice of war to the United States, a serious blunder which stigmatized Japan for launching a premeditated sneak attack, and second, it examines how the Foreign Ministry has dealt with this blunder from the immediate postwar period to the present. Sugihara's aim in both instances is to reevaluate just how costly this error by the Foreign Ministry has been for Japan, and to show how its cover-up and mishandling have distorted postwar Japanese diplomacy.Sugihara demonstrates how the protracted cover-up of the bungled war notice to the United States has severely distorted the way Japan understands its recent past. Deeply concerned with the Ministry's continuing lack of apology to the United States (and the Japanese public) for causing the sneak attack, he presents its misguided handling of several war-related issues, such as its role in the portrayal of the Nanking Incident in high school textbooks, and its treatment of ministerial visits to Yasukuni Shrine. While due credit is given for the Ministry's overdue attempt in November 1994 to address this shameful episode, the author suggests future directions for Japanese diplomacy and delivers a strong moral message about diplomacy and justice.Significantly, Sugihara's is the only extensive analysis in English that exploits newly-declassified documents concerning the suppressed 1946 internal Foreign Ministry investigation of the blunder. Under mounting public pressure, the Ministry in November 1994 made these materials public, and they reveal for the first time precisely when Ministry officials determined whose negligence had caused the delay at Japan's Washington embassy. Critically, the author shows that the ultimate blame for the drawn-out concealment of these documents lies with former prime minister Shigeru Yoshida, whose shameless protection of Katsuzo Okumura and Sadao Iguchi, the embassy officials responsible for","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53534176805137,"sku":"NLS9780761807780","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780761807780.jpg?v=1778541918"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-seishiro-sugihara.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}