How should citizens in a democracy deal with history? What is being asked and equally importantly what is not being asked? Is the history of Japan both during the Second World War and after misused in the West? These are among the fascinating and important questions the supreme historian of wartime and post-war Japan, John Dower, asks in his collection of essays, “Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering: Japan in the Modern World”. As always with Dower the scholarship and the argumentation are of the very highest order, and while the evidence and the opinions given here often challenge orthodoxy he has no “side”, other than the truth.

This book brings together 11 previously published Dower essays, with introductions to each newly written for this collection. Topics covered include US and Japanese wartime attitudes to each other, satire in post-defeat Japan, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan’s occupation of Manchuria and others. All the essays bring forward interesting and at times surprising evidence while adding to the reader's understanding. The book is full of nuggets, such as the reaction of legendary Hollywood director Frank Capra when asked to make US propaganda films by his government, who upon seeing the surprisingly sophisticated Japanese equivalents said “We can’t beat this kind of thing”. Most disturbingly, for me at least, was the chapter about the US refusal to allow a Smithsonian exhibition about the atomic bombings to show the victims or to discuss views that challenge their necessity. Western criticisms of Japan’s failure honestly to discuss its history are often accurate, so you might think the erstwhile Allies would take care to avoid the same error or would understand that their side fought the war in defence of the very freedom of expression they want to shut down. Sadly not.

Dower remains best known for his magisterial history of the occupation of Japan, “Embracing Defeat”, and to a slightly lesser extent “War Without Mercy”, his shocking record of the racism on both sides of the Pacific in that theatre of World War Two. Those are better starting points for a reader interested in Dower’s work, but this new collection is a welcome addition from the best English language scholar of mid-twentieth century Japan. “Allies good, Axis bad” is indeed the correct four-word summary of the morality of the Second World War, but as John Dower shows us, we are or at least we should be capable of a much more sophisticated analysis.

So, three years after I finished writing “Milligan and the Samurai Rebels” I’m now doing the historical reading needed to write its successor. I should be able to put the first word on the page quite soon. The three years weren’t entirely “off” - editing the novel, trying and failing to get an agent, then publishing and marketing the book myself all took time, as did moving the family from Japan to Switzerland and back again - but nevertheless I’ve been out of the “game” for a good while. The question is: have I still got it? “You never had it!” the Waldorf and Statler in my head roar back.

Is novel writing like riding a bike: no matter how long you haven’t done it for it comes back almost instantly? Is it like speaking a foreign language, where it’s very tough at first when you have to do it again after a long break, but with a bit of effort your ability returns quite quickly? Or is it like the pin code for your blasted bank card - don’t use it for a bit and it’s gone completely? I’ll find out soon I guess.

Preparation for the next book at the moment entails a reading list dominated by Japanese history books, and almost all spare time working my way through the list. Re-reading my own novel is part of that, and that’s always an odd experience - a mixture of horror at every comma that seems less than ideally placed, and relief that some of the bits that are supposed to be funny bear at least some relation to that description. The next step is the planning, although with a novel like mine that sticks quite closely to the actual history at least some of the parameters are already in place. A title is not a necessity at this stage, but I have one anyway - “Milligan and the Reluctant Shogun”. Let’s see if that survives the writing process.