SOURCE: Beverly, Elizabeth. “A Tale of Two Peoples.” Commonweal 121, no. 10 (20 May 1994): 28, 30.

In the following review, Beverly praises Buruma's intelligence and compelling interests in The Wages of Guilt, but finds flaws with Buruma's lack of focused analysis and reflection.

Several years ago, Ian Buruma, a Dutch-born journalist and essayist living in England, with well-established ties to Japan, decided to learn more about Japanese memories of World War II, and the relation of these to a resurgence in Japanese nationalism. It appeared that many Japanese, embracing Hiroshima as a symbol, saw themselves most centrally as victims of Allied aggression, not as guilty perpetrators of a brutal war themselves. They still placed a high value on self-sacrifice for the sake of the nation, discipline, racial purity, and other attributes that the Japanese had in common with the Germans during the war.

When Buruma went to Germany, he discovered that many Germans...