This volume is the product of a binational research effort among scholars centered at Cornell University in the U.S. and the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies in Japan. For a period of three years beginning in 1992, we engaged in collaborative research aimed at a reassessment ofJapanese society in the period around World WarII. The results ofthat project include not only the essays presented here, but another group as well, soon to be published in a second volume entitled The Deconstruction ofNationality. Both volumes have already been published in Japanese