In this episode we look at the first half of a 2021 book by Yamamoto Akihiro called Postwar Democracy: The Ideas and Culture that Made Modern Japan (Japanese). Yamamoto looks at Japan's entire postwar history through the lens of "democracy," discussing how it was debated among academics, politicians, and the general public. It's an amazing book, untranslated as of yet in English, and covered here first on the Gaslight.