Showa: A History of Japan is the Shigeru Mizuki's meticulously researched historical portrait of twentieth-century Japan. These 560-page volumes chart Japan's national history from the decades before World War II through the war, its defeat and occupation, and rebirth alongside the personal stories of the individuals living their lives against this momentous history. With his trusty narrator Rat Man, Mizuki brings history into the realm of the personal, making it palatable, and indeed compelling, for young audiences as well as more mature readers.