When we talk about Japan's surrender in World War II, we usually think that it clashed with the United States for dominance in the Pacific and that it finally surrendered after the launch of the two nuclear bombs.
The story is not incorrect, but it obviously omits a lot of relevant information. The background that led to the outcome is what we want to analyze here, not to justify the US action or the Japanese atrocities, but to understand what motivated a unique decision.
To begin to unravel the issue, it is first necessary to understand what Japanese society was like at the time, or to be more precise, what the US thought it was like. Despite the enormous distance that separates both countries, these were old acquaintances. In 1639 Japan imposed a self-imposed policy of isolation that prevented foreigners from entering the country for fear of the influence of Spanish and Portuguese Catholic missionaries. Other factors such as insularity or the high concept that the country had of itself played a role.
This came to an end in 1854 when an American army forced the opening of the country to trade with foreign powers, an opening embodied in a series of economic treaties known as "the unequal treaties", due to the little benefit they represented for the Asian country.
This forced opening was very frowned upon by proud Japanese society, and became one of the factors that led to the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate government system in 1868, which had been in force for 268 years. Then Japanese emigration to the United States began, first to Hawaii and later to the mainland of the west coast. Despite these decades of Japanese presence in the country, the American population barely knew Japanese culture when the conflict broke out, beyond some stereotype about its obsession with work and seriousness.