He expanded his doctoral dissertation, a biography of former Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, into the book Empire and Aftermath.
Dower was the executive producer of the Academy Award-nominated documentary Hellfire: A Journey from Hiroshima, and was a member of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars, sitting on the editorial board of its journal with Noam Chomsky, and Herbert Bix.
"Visualizing Cultures", a course that Dower has taught at MIT since 2003, with Shigeru Miyagawa, discusses how images shape American and Japanese societies.
The curriculum on the website for the Canton Trade unit won the 2011 "Franklin R. Buchanan prize from the Association of Asian Studies for best curricular materials concerning Asia.
"[6] The first Visualizing Cultures unit, "Black Ships & Samurai," written by John Dower, juxtaposed the visual record from the two sides of the 1853–1854 encounter when Commodore Matthew Perry of the United States arrived in Japan aboard the "Black Ships" (steam powered gunboats) to force that long-secluded country to open its borders to the outside world.