Hashimoto covers the main political debates between pacifists, nationalists, and reconciliationists, as she divides the calls her groupings of the main approaches. These distinctions are someties oversimplified, but there are plenty of details and careful references, so anyone can strike out and make up their own mind about the issues discussed.
The last 30 pages of the book are in many respects the most interesting since Hashimoto reflects briefly on the post 2000 events up to 2014. It is too bad that she doesn't deal on more pages with the effects of Chinese and South-Korean nationalism, and the hatred against Japan stoked by Chinese and Korean (both North and South) governments. This is a phenomenon we have seen more of recently, and is used as a tool by the Chinese and Koreans to direct away attention from internal politics and economic problems, and their own issues with authoritarianism and human rights issues; and of course China uses this as an excuse for its own aggressive military expansion. These factors are becoming more and more important as China and both Koreas grow stronger, and turn many of the earlier fears of nationalist Japanese politicians into actual threats that Japan has to take seriously.
Of course these factors also complicate the picture of how Japan should relate to its own WWII role and validate that it should simply move on. Enough apologies have been offered, restitutions have been paid, and since WWII Japan is more peaceful and democratic than the large majority of its vocal critics, including China, the Koreas, and the US. Chinese and South-Korean politicians are utterly reluctant to admit the strenght of the Japanese peace-movements, the fact that their militaries are stronger or as strong as the Japanese, or that they are employing authoritarian, dictatoric means against their own citizens, as well as that they also have a violent history going back millenias. Until they use the conflicts with Japan for domestic political purposes in this way, the apology-politics should stop, the topic should be dropped, and a more forward looking vision crafted for Japan. Of course the horrible war crimes perpetrated by Japanese soldiers, leaders and sometimes even civilians have to be openly remembered. But they do not constitute the whole history of Japan, nor are they the only and main thing about the country around which its identity should be constructed.
This is perhaps my biggest point of disagreement with Hashimoto, who never challenges whether the relationship to Japan to its WWII role should be a central topic these days, and whether it should really be so important to the nation's identity (if there is such a thing at all). Surely there is more to Japan's history the tragic and guilty war years between, say roughly 1929-1945, and there is definitely more to it more than 70 years down the line. Since then Japan has been supporting other countries in their economic build-up, been a peaceful country, and evolved into a major welfare state conscious of the rights, interests, and wellbeing of its citizens. This cannot be said of the US which waged many wars and where the social network - which was always weak - hasn't developed properly, or China where an authoritarian regime is keeping its people cut off from the internet, occupied tibet, the north-eastern territories, and is punishing by torture, prisoning and force any serious organized dissent. The maniac focus on the issue of Japan's WWII role just seems to serve political interests of nationalist politicians in Japan, and the Chinese, Korean, Russian, and US military and political dilpomacy.
Akiko Hashimoto, The Long Defeat. 2015. New York: Oxford University Press.
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