Last Man Standing: Courting Revival in Postwar Japan

Abstract

Japan’s surrender in August 1945 did not signal the cession of chal­lenges for Yamamoto Sanehiko but merely provided a temporary reprieve. In fact, for a short time after the war, Yamamoto’s fortunes seemed to turn, and his political and professional careers experienced something of a renaissance. The immediate postwar period, in which Yamamoto attempted to reestablish Kaiz ō as one of Japan’s preemi­nent comprehensive magazines and to reassert Kaizōsha’s reputation as a leading publisher while fighting to resurrect his stalled political career, was as unsettled and treacherous a time in some ways as the war period that proceeded it. As in the traumatic years preceding Japan’s surrender, Yamamoto seemed to flourish at precisely those times in which his prospects and those of Kaizōsha seemed most dire.