Herbert P. Bix (born 1938) is an American historian. He wrote ''

Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan ''Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan'' is a book by Herbert P. Bix covering the reign of Emperor Hirohito of Japan from 1926 until his death in 1989. It won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction The Pulitzer Prize for General N ...

'', an account of the

Japanese Emperor The Emperor of Japan is the monarch and the head of the Imperial Family of Japan. Under the Constitution of Japan, he is defined as the symbol of the Japanese state and the unity of the Japanese people, and his position is derived from "the w ...

and the events which shaped modern

Japanese imperialism This is a list of regions occupied or annexed by the Empire of Japan until 1945, the year of the end of World War II in Asia, after the surrender of Japan. Control over all territories except most of the Japanese mainland (Hokkaido, Honshu, Kyu ...

, which won the

Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction The Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are awarded annually for the "Letters, Drama, and Music" category. The award is given to a nonfiction book written by an American author and published duri ...

in 2001. Bix was born in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

and attended the

University of Massachusetts Amherst The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst, UMass) is a public research university in Amherst, Massachusetts and the sole public land-grant university in Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Founded in 1863 as an agricultural college, ...

. He earned the PhD in

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...

and

Far Eastern The ''Far East'' was a European term to refer to the geographical regions that includes East and Southeast Asia as well as the Russian Far East to a lesser extent. South Asia is sometimes also included for economic and cultural reasons. The ter ...

languages from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

. He was a founding member of the

Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars The Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars (CCAS) was founded in 1968 by a group of graduate students and younger faculty as part of the opposition to the American participation in the Vietnam War. They proposed a "radical critique of the assumptio ...

. For several decades, he has written about modern and contemporary Japanese history in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

and Japan. He has taught at many universities, including

Hosei University is a private university based in Tokyo, Japan. The university originated in a school of law, Tōkyō Hōgakusha (, i.e. Tokyo association of law), established in 1880, and the following year renamed Tōkyō Hōgakkō (, i.e. Tokyo school of law ...

in Japan as of 1986 and 1990, and

Hitotsubashi University is a national university located in Tokyo, Japan. It has campuses in Kunitachi, Kodaira, and Chiyoda. One of the top 9 Designated National University in Japan, Hitotsubashi is a relatively small institution specialized solely in social science ...

as of 2001. As of 2013 he is Professor Emeritus in History and Sociology at Binghamton University. His book 'Peasant Protest in Japan, 1590–1884' was hailed as 'a sensitive rendering of the actions of great masses of people' and a superior 'Marxist history'.

Selected works

* ''Peasant Protest in Japan, 1590–1884''. New Haven Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986. * "Hiroshima in History and Memory: A Symposium, Japan's Delayed Surrender: A Reinterpretation." ''Diplomatic History'' 19, no. 2 (1995): pp. 197–225. * Remembering the Nanking Massacre * Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan

References

External links

Bix: Hirohito decision led to later problems
* - review of ''

'' * * *
Bix and his Hirohito: On the Use and Misuse of Sources
George Akita, The Asiatic Society of Japan, 2003-11-03 1938 births Living people Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction winners Historians of Japan Binghamton University faculty University of Massachusetts Amherst alumni Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Date of birth missing (living people) 20th-century American male writers 21st-century American male writers 20th-century American historians 21st-century American historians 20th-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers American male non-fiction writers {{US-historian-stub