The Military Might Of Modern Japan

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.

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title Alternate attendance (sankin kotai) was one of the central institutions of Edo-period (1603-1868) Japan and one of the most unusual examples of a system of enforced elite mobility in world history. It required the daimyo to divide their time between their domains and the city of Edo, where they waited upon the Tokugawa shogun. Based on a prodigious amount of research in both published and archival primary sources, Tour of Duty renders alternate attendance as a lived experience, for not only the daimyo but also the samurai retainers who accompanied them. Beyond exploring the nature of travel to and from the capital as well as the period of enforced bachelorhood there, Constantine Vaporis elucidates-for the first time-the significance of alternate attendance as an engine of cultural, intellectual, material, and technological exchange. Vaporis argues against the view that cultural change simply emanated from the center (Edo) and reveals more complex patterns of cultural circulation and production taking place between the domains and Edo and among distant parts of Japan. What is generally known as "Edo culture" in fact incorporated elements from the localities. In some cases, Edo acted as a nexus for exchange; at other times, culture traveled from one area to another without passing through the capital. As a result, even those who did not directly participate in alternate attendance experienced a world much larger than their own. Vaporis begins by detailing the nature of the trip to and from the capital for one particular large-scale domain, Tosa, and its men and goes on to analyze the political and cultural meanings of the processions of the daimyo and their extensive entourages up and down the highways. These parade-like movements were replete with symbolic import for the nature of early modern governance. Later chapters are concerned with the physical and social environment experienced by the daimyo's retainers in Edo; they also address the question of who went to Edo and why, the network of physical spaces in which the domainal samurai lived, the issue of staffing, political power, and the daily lives and consumption habits of retainers. Finally, Vaporis examines retainers as carriers of culture, both in a literal and a figurative sense. In doing so, he reveals the significance of travel for retainers and their identity as consumers and producers of culture, thus proposing a multivalent model of cultural change.

In Playing War, Sabine Frühstück makes a bold proposition: that for over a century throughout Japan and beyond, children and concepts of childhood have been appropriated as tools for decidedly unchildlike purposes: to validate, moralize, humanize, and naturalize war, and to sentimentalize peace. She argues that modern conceptions of war insist on and exploit a specific and static notion of the child: that the child, though the embodiment of vulnerability and innocence, nonetheless possesses an inherent will to war, and that this seemingly contradictory creature demonstrates what it means to be human. In examining the intersection of children/childhood with war/military, Frühstück identifies the insidious factors perpetuating this alliance, thus rethinking the very foundations of modern militarism. She interrogates how essentialist notions of both childhood and war have been productively intertwined; how assumptions about childhood and war have converged; and how children and childhood have worked as symbolic constructions and powerful rhetorical tools, particularly in the decades between the nation- and empire-building efforts of the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries up to the uneven manifestations of globalization at the beginning of the twenty-first.

A considerable amount of writing has been published on Japan at war in WWII. Scholars have been revisiting the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5. This volume examines 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.

"This is one of the best—most surprising, insightful, provocative—books I've read on the complex interplay of memory, militarism and masculinity. Japan specialists will be sure to find it thought-provoking. But it should also be 'must reading' for all students of masculinity, femininity, militarization, and soldiering. This is comparative feminist ethnography at its smartest."—Cynthia Enloe, author of The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire "Uneasy Warriors presents a rare and intimate view into the psychological and social workings of the Self-Defense Forces. As the US and Japanese governments gear up to change the Japanese anti-war constitution, this book is even more important for understanding what the consequences will be."—Catherine Lutz, author of Homefront: A Military City and the American 20th Century "Sabine Frühstück expertly describes the ambiguous status of the Japanese Self Defense Forces. The book reveals insights gained from several years of sustained research, including a stint "in uniform" at an army base near Mt. Fuji. Frühstück's observations about the SDF's public relations emphasis on "cute" popular cultural media are timely and trenchant, as are her analyses of the militarization of masculinity and femininity."—Jennifer Robertson, author of Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan

In Post-war Japan as a Sea Power, Alessio Patalano incorporates new, exclusive source material to develop an innovative approach to the study of post-war Japan as a military power. This archival-based history of Asia's most advanced navy, the Japanese Maritime Self-Defence Force (JMSDF), looks beyond the traditional perspective of viewing the modern Japanese military in light of the country's alliance with the US. The book places the institution in a historical context, analysing its imperial legacy and the role of Japan's shattering defeat in WWII in the post-war emergence of Japan as East Asia's 'sea power'.

"A lucid history of the rise and fall of militarism in Japan…" --New York Journal of Books Japan at War in the Pacific recounts the dramatic story of Japan's transformation from a Samurai-led feudal society to a modern military-industrial empire in the space of a few decades--and the many wars it fought along the way. These culminated in an attempt by Japan's military leaders to create an Asia-Pacific empire which at its greatest extent rivaled the British Empire in scope and power. The battle for supremacy in the Pacific brought the Japanese to great heights but led ultimately to the nation's utter devastation at the end of World War II, culminating with the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki--the only time such weapons have been used in warfare. In this book, author Jonathan Clements offers fascinating insights into: The wars that Japan fought during its rise to supremacy in the western Pacific, including the Russo-Japanese War, the seizure of Manchuria and war in China, and the Pacific theater of World War II. The many military actions undertaken by Imperial Japanese forces including the horrific "Rape of Nanjing," the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the decisive defeat at the Battle of Midway, the savage Battles of Okinawa and Iwo Jima, and many more. The motivations and beliefs of Japan's leaders, as well as the policy decisions of a government dedicated to expansion which ultimately led to a complete dismantling of the nation's political and social order during the Allied Occupation. With over 75 photographs and maps, this book vividly recounts the brutal story of Japan's military conquests. Clements charts the evolution of the Japanese empire in the Pacific and the influence of a ruthless military-led government on everything from culture and food to fashion and education--including the anthems and rallying calls of a martial nation which were silenced long ago but continue to echo in Asian politics.