Drawing on decades of experience and research, Dower highlights resemblances between wartime, postwar, and contemporary Japan. He argues persuasively that the origins of many of the institutions responsible for Japan's dominant position in today's global economy derive from the rapid military industrialization of the 1930s and not from the post-Occupation period, as many have assumed. The brilliant lead essay: "The Useful War," sets the tone for the volume by incisively showing how much of Japan's postwar political and economic structure was prefigured in the wartime organization of that country.