War and Militarism in Modern Japan
War and Militarism in Modern Japan

Author: Guy Podoler

Publisher: Global Oriental

Published: 2009-08-01

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9004213007

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A considerable amount of writing has been published on Japan at war in the Second World War, and more recently scholars have been revisiting the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5; whereas this volume strives to examine Japan’s twentieth-century approach to war and militarism in a wider perspective, bringing hitherto unexamined new themes and subject-matter under scrutiny up to the present day. Among the topics covered are the February 26 Incident in Theatre and Film, Ethnicity and Gender in Wartime Japanese Revue Theatre, Military Festivals and the Japanese Self-Defence Forces, Major Trends in Japanese Treatment of POWs in Modern Times, and Japan’s ‘Tug of War’after the Russian War. Published to mark the distinguished academic career of Ben-Ami Shillony, who retired in 2006, this volume also offers valuable new insights into the theme of the Japanese and the Jews, including the Story and Myth of Anne Frank and Sadako Sasaki, the involvement of Jewish scientists in the making of the atomic bomb, and Japan’s Jewish Policy in the late 1930s.

Japan's Imperial Army
Japan's Imperial Army

Author: Edward J. Drea

Publisher: University Press of Kansas

Published: 2016-05-03

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 0700622349

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Popular impressions of the imperial Japanese army still promote images of suicidal banzai charges and fanatical leaders blindly devoted to their emperor. Edward Drea looks well past those stereotypes to unfold the more complex story of how that army came to power and extended its influence at home and abroad to become one of the world's dominant fighting forces. This first comprehensive English-language history of the Japanese army traces its origins, evolution, and impact as an engine of the country's regional and global ambitions and as a catalyst for the militarization of the Japanese homeland from mid-nineteenth-century incursions through the end of World War II. Demonstrating his mastery of Japanese-language sources, Drea explains how the Japanese style of warfare, burnished by samurai legends, shaped the army, narrowed its options, influenced its decisions, and made it the institution that conquered most of Asia. He also tells how the army's intellectual foundations shifted as it reinvented itself to fulfill the changing imperatives of Japanese society-and how the army in turn decisively shaped the nation's political, social, cultural, and strategic course. Drea recounts how Japan devoted an inordinate amount of its treasury toward modernizing, professionalizing, and training its army-which grew larger, more powerful, and politically more influential with each passing decade. Along the way, it produced an efficient military schooling system, a well-organized active duty and reserve force, a professional officer corps that thought in terms of regional threat, and well-trained soldiers armed with appropriate weapons. Encompassing doctrine, strategy, weaponry, and civil-military relations, Drea's expert study also captures the dominant personalities who shaped the imperial army, from Yamagata Aritomo, an incisive geopolitical strategist, to Anami Korechika, who exhorted the troops to fight to the death during the final days of World War II. Summing up, Drea also suggests that an army that places itself above its nation's interests is doomed to failure.

Playing War
Playing War

Author: Sabine Frühstück

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2017-07-18

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0520295447

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Playing War: Field games. Paper battles -- Picturing war: The moral authority of innocence. Queering war -- Epilogue: the rule of babies in pink

Curse on This Country
Curse on This Country

Author: Danny Orbach

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2017-02-14

Total Pages: 349

ISBN-13: 1501708333

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Imperial Japanese soldiers were notorious for blindly following orders, and their enemies in the Pacific War derided them as "cattle to the slaughter." But, in fact, the Japanese Army had a long history as one of the most disobedient armies in the world. Officers repeatedly staged coups d'états, violent insurrections, and political assassinations; their associates defied orders given by both the government and the general staff, launched independent military operations against other countries, and in two notorious cases conspired to assassinate foreign leaders despite direct orders to the contrary.In Curse on This Country, Danny Orbach explains the culture of rebellion in the Japanese armed forces. It was a culture created by a series of seemingly innocent decisions, each reasonable in its own right, which led to a gradual weakening of Japanese government control over its army and navy. The consequences were dire, as the armed forces dragged the government into more and more of China across the 1930s—a culture of rebellion that made the Pacific War possible. Orbach argues that brazen defiance, rather than blind obedience, was the motive force of modern Japanese history.Curse on This Country follows a series of dramatic events: assassinations in the dark corners of Tokyo, the famous rebellion of Saigō Takamori, the "accidental" invasion of Taiwan, the Japanese ambassador’s plot to murder the queen of Korea, and the military-political crisis in which the Japanese prime minister "changed colors." Finally, through the sinister plots of the clandestine Cherry Blossom Society, we follow the deterioration of Japan into chaos, fascism, and world war.

A Military History of Japan
A Military History of Japan

Author: John T. Kuehn

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2014-01-15

Total Pages: 422

ISBN-13:

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This comprehensive volume traces the evolution of Japanese military history—from 300 AD to present day foreign relations—and reveals how the country's cultural views of power, violence, and politics helped shape Japan's long and turbulent history of war. The legacy of Japanese warfare is steeped in honor, duty, and valor. Yet, some of the more violent episodes in this country's military history have tainted foreign attitudes toward Japan, oftentimes threatening the economic stability of the Pacific region. This book documents Japan's long and stormy history of war and military action, provides a thorough analysis of the social and political changes that have contributed to the evolution of Japan's foreign policy and security decisions, and reveals the truth behind the common myths and misconceptions of this nation's iconic war symbols and events, including samurais, warlords, and kamikaze attacks. Written by an author with military experience and insight into modern-day Japanese culture gained from living in Japan, A Military History of Japan: From the Age of the Samurai to the 21st Century examines how Japan's history of having warrior-based leaderships, imperialist governments, and dictators has shaped the country's concepts of war. It provides a complete military history of Japan—from the beginning of the Imperial institution to the post-Cold War era—in a single volume. This thoughtful resource also contains photos, maps, and a glossary of key Japanese terms to support learning.

From Party Politics to Militarism in Japan, 1924-1941
From Party Politics to Militarism in Japan, 1924-1941

Author: Shinichi Kitaoka

Publisher:

Published: 2020-08-31

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 9781626378575

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The years in Japan between June 1924, when a coalition cabinet of three political parties was established, and December 1941, when the country declared war on the United States and Britain, was characterized first by nearly a decade of domestic and international cooperation-and then a period of oppressive militarism. Kitaoka Shinichi captures the essence of these years in Japan's political history, stressing not only the discontinuities, but also the connections, between the two periods.Kitaoka pays particular attention to the interaction of domestic and foreign affairs. He equally explores the conflicts between political parties and the military-as well as those among internal factions in both spheres. Connecting political issues to economic and social developments, his book serves as a comprehensive history of the period, a history that, in his words, "exemplifies the horrific damage that can result when a modern nation-state goes off course."

Conflicts of Interest
Conflicts of Interest

Author: Sebastian Dobson

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 9780295999814

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Published in conjunction with the exhibition Conflicts of Interest: Art and War in Modern Japan, presented at the Saint Louis Art Museum from October 16, 2016-January 8, 2017.

Japan’s Decision For War In 1941: Some Enduring Lessons
Japan’s Decision For War In 1941: Some Enduring Lessons

Author: Dr. Jeffrey Record

Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing

Published: 2015-11-06

Total Pages: 105

ISBN-13: 1786252961

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Japan’s decision to attack the United States in 1941 is widely regarded as irrational to the point of suicidal. How could Japan hope to survive a war with, much less defeat, an enemy possessing an invulnerable homeland and an industrial base 10 times that of Japan? The Pacific War was one that Japan was always going to lose, so how does one explain Tokyo’s decision? Did the Japanese recognize the odds against them? Did they have a concept of victory, or at least of avoiding defeat? Or did the Japanese prefer a lost war to an unacceptable peace? Dr. Jeffrey Record takes a fresh look at Japan’s decision for war, and concludes that it was dictated by Japanese pride and the threatened economic destruction of Japan by the United States. He believes that Japanese aggression in East Asia was the root cause of the Pacific War, but argues that the road to war in 1941 was built on American as well as Japanese miscalculations and that both sides suffered from cultural ignorance and racial arrogance. Record finds that the Americans underestimated the role of fear and honor in Japanese calculations and overestimated the effectiveness of economic sanctions as a deterrent to war, whereas the Japanese underestimated the cohesion and resolve of an aroused American society and overestimated their own martial prowess as a means of defeating U.S. material superiority. He believes that the failure of deterrence was mutual, and that the descent of the United States and Japan into war contains lessons of great and continuing relevance to American foreign policy and defense decision-makers.

Hirohito And The Making Of Modern Japan
Hirohito And The Making Of Modern Japan

Author: Herbert P. Bix

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2009-10-13

Total Pages: 832

ISBN-13: 0061860476

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Winner of the Pulitzer Prize In this groundbreaking biography of the Japanese emperor Hirohito, Herbert P. Bix offers the first complete, unvarnished look at the enigmatic leader whose sixty-three-year reign ushered Japan into the modern world. Never before has the full life of this controversial figure been revealed with such clarity and vividness. Bix shows what it was like to be trained from birth for a lone position at the apex of the nation's political hierarchy and as a revered symbol of divine status. Influenced by an unusual combination of the Japanese imperial tradition and a modern scientific worldview, the young emperor gradually evolves into his preeminent role, aligning himself with the growing ultranationalist movement, perpetuating a cult of religious emperor worship, resisting attempts to curb his power, and all the while burnishing his image as a reluctant, passive monarch. Here we see Hirohito as he truly was: a man of strong will and real authority. Supported by a vast array of previously untapped primary documents, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan is perhaps most illuminating in lifting the veil on the mythology surrounding the emperor's impact on the world stage. Focusing closely on Hirohito's interactions with his advisers and successive Japanese governments, Bix sheds new light on the causes of the China War in 1937 and the start of the Asia-Pacific War in 1941. And while conventional wisdom has had it that the nation's increasing foreign aggression was driven and maintained not by the emperor but by an elite group of Japanese militarists, the reality, as witnessed here, is quite different. Bix documents in detail the strong, decisive role Hirohito played in wartime operations, from the takeover of Manchuria in 1931 through the attack on Pearl Harbor and ultimately the fateful decision in 1945 to accede to an unconditional surrender. In fact, the emperor stubbornly prolonged the war effort and then used the horrifying bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, together with the Soviet entrance into the war, as his exit strategy from a no-win situation. From the moment of capitulation, we see how American and Japanese leaders moved to justify the retention of Hirohito as emperor by whitewashing his wartime role and reshaping the historical consciousness of the Japanese people. The key to this strategy was Hirohito's alliance with General MacArthur, who helped him maintain his stature and shed his militaristic image, while MacArthur used the emperor as a figurehead to assist him in converting Japan into a peaceful nation. Their partnership ensured that the emperor's image would loom large over the postwar years and later decades, as Japan began to make its way in the modern age and struggled -- as it still does -- to come to terms with its past. Until the very end of a career that embodied the conflicting aims of Japan's development as a nation, Hirohito remained preoccupied with politics and with his place in history. Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan provides the definitive account of his rich life and legacy. Meticulously researched and utterly engaging, this book is proof that the history of twentieth-century Japan cannot be understood apart from the life of its most remarkable and enduring leader.

Defamiliarizing Japan’s Asia-Pacific War
Defamiliarizing Japan’s Asia-Pacific War

Author: W. Puck Brecher

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2019-10-31

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 0824881370

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This wide-ranging collection seeks to reassess conventional understanding of Japan’s Asia-Pacific War by defamiliarizing and expanding the rhetorical narrative. Its nine chapters, diverse in theme and method, are united in their goal to recover a measured historicity about the conflict by either introducing new areas of knowledge or reinterpreting existing ones. Collectively, they cast doubt on the war as familiar and recognizable, compelling readers to view it with fresh eyes. Following an introduction that problematizes timeworn narratives about a “unified Japan” and its “illegal war” or “race war,” early chapters on the destruction of Japan’s diplomatic records and government interest in an egalitarian health care policy before, during, and after the war oblige us to question selective histories and moral judgments about wartime Japan. The discussion then turns to artistic/cultural production and self-determination, specifically to Osaka rakugo performers who used comedy to contend with state oppression and to the role of women in creating care packages for soldiers abroad. Other chapters cast doubt on well-trod stereotypes (Japan’s lack of pragmatism in its diplomatic relations with neutral nations and its irrational and fatalistic military leadership) and examine resistance to the war by a prominent Japanese Christian intellectual. The volume concludes with two nuanced responses to race in wartime Japan, one maintaining the importance of racial categories while recognizing the “performance of Japaneseness,” the other observing that communities often reflected official government policies through nationality rather than race. Contrasting findings like these underscore the need to ask new questions and fill old gaps in our understanding of a historical event that, after more than seventy years, remains as provocative and divisive as ever. Defamiliarizing Japan’s Asia-Pacific War will find a ready audience among World War II historians as well as specialists in war and society, social history, and the growing fields of material culture and civic history.