The Long Defeat explores war memory in Japan after World War II, showing how and why defeat remains an indelible part of national life. The book shows that assessing the culture of defeat is the key to understanding Japan's "history problem" - the disputes over revising the pacifist constitution, remilitarization, and frictions in East Asia. Hashimoto makes a welcome contribution to the methodology of trauma studies. She proposes and tests an interesting "method of shadow comparisons," the method of data elaboration.