Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II is a history book written by John W. Dower and published by W. W. Norton & Company in 1999.

Martyn Smith considers it to be "an outstanding account of US-Japan relations in the aftermath of the war and a useful guide to understanding the trans-national nature of Japan’s rise to economic superpower".

[8] Michael Schaller noted that Dower "uses not only a rich array of period photographs but also art, comic books, poetry, letters, and journals from the 1940s to examine how the Japanese coped with hunger, homelessness, and despair in the wake of surrender.

In the process, Dower delves into the technical and human dimensions of the black market, prostitution, the treatment of demobilized soldiers, the blossoming of literature despite a rigid and often mindless censorship that barred virtually any discussion of the nuclear bombs' impact, and the evolution of language to accommodate Japan's radically altered circumstances.

A. Stockwin in his review for The New York Times calls it a "richly nuanced book" and writes that "Dower adopts a critical view of the occupation, but, interestingly, he is plainly enamored of the sheer democratic panache of that Constitution and of the largely -- though not wholly -- successful efforts of Government Section bureaucrats to prevent the Japanese Government from subtly undermining its key provisions".