Seminar:
Reconsidering Japan's Decision to Surrender, 1945

Dr. Jeremy A. Yellen

Date: 7 Oct 2015 (Wed)
Time: 4:30-6:00 pm
Venue: Room 4.36, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

This talk explores the exciting politics behind Japan's decision to surrender 70 years ago. It takes issue with the existing tendency among scholarship to focus on military affairs at the expense of a broader understanding of the domestic situation in Japan. I argue that domestic politics was a critical factor behind the decision to terminate the war in August 1945. A near-obsessive fear of social revolution, I argue, played an important role in prompting Japan’s conservative ruling elites to make the decision to end the war.

Jeremy A. Yellen is a historian of modern Japan and an Assistant Professor of Japanese Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.