Credit Emperor for putting big questions front and center for the audience to ponder: What is the United States, in the role of victor, supposed to do as a nation-builder? Benevolence?  Revenge? Step away and let the power vacuum be filled by something unknown (in 1945 Japan, this is Stalin and communism). With the United States’ role in the change of leadership in Iraq and  Afghanistan, these questions still haunt the world’s foremost democracy. The movie succeeds in demonstrating there are no easy answers.