DBWI: Has anyone read that book on the history of North Japan (1946-2008)?

It has been almost two weeks since a book on the history of North Japan by the famed historian N.L. Gingrich debuted in the bookstores. I was just wondering if it is recommended reading. And if so, is it a subjective instead of a biased account on the rise and fall of the People's Republic of Japan?

I heard that the book has an alternate history chapter that describes the atomic bombs falling on Hiroshima and Nagasaki leading to Emperor Hirohito's radio address of Japan's unconditional surrender, the peace treaty ending the war and Japan's transformation to a democratic constitutional monarchy with no Communist North Japan.
 
I really doubt Hirohito would have surrendered like that, he was a puppet of the military if not an active supporter of their expansionist aims. Hadhe tried it he'd either have been deposed or reduced to figurehead status. Other than that it's a good read!
 
I heard that the book has an alternate history chapter that describes the atomic bombs falling on Hiroshima and Nagasaki leading to Emperor Hirohito's radio address of Japan's unconditional surrender, the peace treaty ending the war and Japan's transformation to a democratic constitutional monarchy with no Communist North Japan.

DEMOCRATIC CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY in JAPAN? We are talking about the same Japan that welcomed the Soviets with open arms because they weren't willing to live under anything but an Autocracy? The same Japan that set up GULAG 837 to continue their black projects in Bio warfare?

Japan ends up with two dictatorships, one in the North and one in the South. Both are essentially extensions of the Imperial regime, but under a different name and backer.

All in all the Japanese Civil War was not only plausible, it was practically guaranteed. That it ended in a stale mate was guaranteed as well. Both of the North's and South's populations were demolished from their resistance to the occupation, so neither really had an advantage in the war.
 
I really doubt Hirohito would have surrendered like that, he was a puppet of the military if not an active supporter of their expansionist aims. Hadhe tried it he'd either have been deposed or reduced to figurehead status. Other than that it's a good read!

IIRC that's exactly what happened IOTL; the Emperor tried to surrender but the military caught wind of it and pulled a sort of coup.

DEMOCRATIC CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY in JAPAN? We are talking about the same Japan that welcomed the Soviets with open arms because they weren't willing to live under anything but an Autocracy? The same Japan that set up GULAG 837 to continue their black projects in Bio warfare?

Come on, that's not fair; Japan was fairly democratic during the Taisho period and since the free and fair Presidential elections in '85 the South has been a modern liberal democracy. For that matter, their elections in '90 and '95 were smoother than the headache our '92 Presidential Election was.
 
This is the same South which massacred, on LIVE CAMERA thousands of people, although they didn't know about the camera until it was spread on the Internet. Before you ask, this footage has been checked repeatedly and proven to be true by experts.

This is also the same one which recently economically expanded from following... a 5 YEAR PLAN, and of the same type that North Japan used to currently dominate electronics manufacturing to the point where the cell phone you own was probably manufactured there.

South Japan is not a liberal democracy really.
 
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Frankly, I find the Gingrich analysis to be fundamentally flawed. It is a frothy mix of specious conjectures and severely deficient in several major respects. :D
 
Whilst it's good to see alternate history being used in mainstream historical works I think Gingrich overestimates the impact of nuclear weapons somewhat. Japan was already losing cities to bombing raids more lethal then early atomics, it would have taken more than two to force their surrender if at all.
 
Frankly, I find the Gingrich analysis to be fundamentally flawed. It is a frothy mix of specious conjectures and severely deficient in several major respects. :D


Did you say frothy?


At least he advocates diversity.

I counted at least two black lesbian ninjas with his post-war "Special Forces" chapter! Special indeed!
 
I think his work might be the most scholarly piece of modern political analysis from the University of West Georgia to date. His thoughts on the Sapporo Shogunate and the Imperial Demise are pretty spot-on, the division of Tokyo with the American Zone out of Koto-Ku, Sum-Daku, Chiyoda-Ku, Chou-Ku, and Arakawa-Ku along with the British Zone from old Ota-Ku, Shinagawa-Ku, Meguro-Ku, Setagaya-Ku, and Minato-Ku formed a Hong-Kong like enclave where at points in time had the only working electricity in the city. But with the Reunification after the fall of the USSR and the disaster of the nuclear power plants throughout the old Shogunate it will be a long time before the country is truly reunified. I guess it could be worse, suppose they had focused their attention on Korea, which united peacefuly after the war, instead of Japan. Without the "Silicon Valley of Asia" out of the Pyongyang-Sariwon area with the financial capital at Seoul to finance it all who knows where global technology levels would be today.
 
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