Between the early 1930s and 1945, Germany and Japan went on the most destructive rampage the world has ever seen. The atrocities committed by their armies and police forces became a byword for human cruelty. Ian Buruma's new book is about the way the Germans and Japanese cope with this terrible past. It is about the painful realities of living with guilt, and of denying it. He meets people who will amaze the reader by the ingenuity of their evasion of responsibility. He goes to Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Hiroshima to see how history at its worst is remembered. He visits grotesque monuments, such as the Japanese shrine to the Kamikaze pilots.