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58 of 61 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Toland Set The Standard For Readable History!, July 3, 2003
For anyone truly interested in finding and reading one of the first definitive histories of Imperial Japan, this is the book. This work is at once carefully documented and scholarly yet is also eminently readable and entertaining. Although there is no single volume that adequately explains the mysterious story of how Japan rose to threaten the eastern half of the globe, author John Toland delivers a most informative and exhaustively researched manuscript that does help us to understand the essential elements stirred in the witches brew that poisoned most of Asia from 1933 until 1945. It has the unique and helpul tact of being written from the Japanese perspective, something Toland was able to accomplish with the help of his Japanese wife and collaborator. As with all his works, Toland spent several years researching this book with intensive interviews by surviving principals, and had access to a wide range of archival data and previously unpublished data and facts. The result is this magisterial work. As mentioned above, this is a book that concentrates heavily on interviews with a literal torrent of people who had significant contact and knowledge of the circumstance and conditions that fostered and expedited the rise of the militant and imperialistic military class within Japanese society, and of the ways their rise and interests coalesced and matched the long-term desires of the Japanese power elite, who mistakenly believed they could manipulate and control the military in their actions. Like the German aristocracy that climbed into bed with Hitler thinking they could do the same, they made the fatal error of underestimating the Machiavellian aims and purposes of the Japanese military. Toland faithfully traces the rise and growth of this military cult as it falls prey to a variety of venomous and unfortunate ideas and prejudices that marks it and Japan for an inevitable rendezvous with destiny. Toland makes a painful effort to be non-judgmental, and carefully presents all the facts as he can best determine them. This sometimes makes him err on the side of presenting personal and perhaps subjective opinions of others as fact, and this is typical of the Toland approach. While recognizing the dangers in presenting a lot of information into the record that might be inaccurate, twisted, or fanciful, he also wants us to hear the whole story from all of the participant's viewpoints so we can make our own informed judgment. In this sense Toland has a somewhat archaic belief in the historical reader's critical skills and to be well-enough formed as thinkers that he lets us judge for ourselves based on our interpretation of the `facts' he presents rather than pre-digesting and coming to his own conclusions for us. The busman's tour he takes through pre-war Japan, observing and describing the collection of rag-tag malcontents using the military to facilitate and sanctify their own radical ideas and ambitions is quite interesting, as is his casual and matter-of-fact presentation of what is certainly a horrifying plethora of unbelievably provocative, ruthless and despicable acts on the parts of a number of elements within Japanese society. The horror later visited in Nanking, Singapore, and in the Philippines is all too predictable based on their savage conduct toward each other in years preceding the outbreak of the war. This is also history at its best, unblinking, without comment or sentiment, and in your face. Much of what you will read you can find elsewhere, but nowhere else can you find it presented in the style and grace that Toland brings to the printed page. Simply stated, this is an outstanding piece of historical biography, and is also truly the standard against which all other, more recent works on imperial Japan must be judged. Enjoy!
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36 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
World War Two as seen by the Japanese side, July 8, 2006
This is an impressive work that really makes an attempt to analyze the causes of Japan's conflict with the United States during the Second World War, and the events during the war that culminate with Japan's defeat. I have read no other work that goes into comparable depth as regards the complexities of 1940s Japanese politics. This work impressively manages to at least try to explain why the Japanese side decided to go to war with the United States, a country that many of its leaders understood to be more powerful than Japan in almost every measurable category of war-making capability.
Author Toland does manage to inject a certain amount of pro-Japanese bias into the causes of the War. Essentially, Japan wanted for itself more or less what the British had in their own Empire: a group of states that were economically and militarily subservient to Japan. The Japanese "Co-Prosperity Sphere" was plainly modelled on the British and other European colonial empires. Toland spends less time dealing with the fact that the countries that Japan had decided should be part of this new Empire did not wish to be Japanese colonial subjects. Further, he touches upon the fact (but deemphasizes its importance) that this Japanese ambition involved savage mistreatment of civilians that both the American government and US public opinion could not possibly have condoned.
Further, Japanese politics in the 1930s and 1940s was dominated by militarists to a greater extent than any Western power. Even Nazi Germany was a civilian government to which the military was clearly subservient. (Of course its civilian government was more radical and fanatical than the German military, creating a different host of problems.) In Japan, the military faction was not above assassinating or physically intimidating its political rivals, and this resulted in a thorough domination of Japanese politics by the the military. This control of politics by Japanese militarists is the true cause of Japan's aggression against China, and later the US and its allies, and indeed of the Pacific War. Some have criticized this work by Toland for somewhat brushing aside the aggressive and indeed savage actions of Japan against its neighbors and I concur with this criticism. Certainly the US was within its rights, and held the moral high ground, when it refused to supply Japan with oil and other raw materials (the actions which directly precipitated the attack on Peal Harbor) at a time when Japan was actively involved in warring upon other countries (i.e. China) that were friendly to the US. The fact that some of these lands were under European domination (i.e. Southeast Asia) in no way excuses Japan's own aggression against these peoples. Toland's work to some extent attempts to create a moral equivalence by comparing Japan's imperial and territorial aspirations to European empires of the time (the British, Dutch, and French). In fact, to some extent Toland seems to question the refusal of Secretary of State Hull and the Roosevelt Administration to accept, and even aid and abet, Japan's wars against China and Southeast Asia. On the other hand, Toland deserves kudos for at least developing a thorough understanding of the issues as the Japanese politicians perceived them, and this book is a very insightful and very readable analysis of Japanese prewar and wartime politics.
Toland's analysis of Japanese wartime politics and military strategy, and her reluctance to sue for peace, is somewhat more detached than his analysis of Japan's prewar politics. Further, this portion of the book is very well-written to such an extent that I almost could not put it down. The one conclusion that I derived from the book is that Japan was thoroughly under the control of the military and the military did not contemplate either the possibility of defeat or the possiblility that Japan might achieve security and prosperity for her people by means other than conquest. This conclusion is most stark when one reviews Japan's refusal to surrender or sue for peace after the war was plainly lost. In late 1944 and 1945 Japan had no Navy, its Army was cut off by the American Navy, and the US was bombing Japan almost at will, causing unspeakable hardships to the entire Japanese populace. And yet the Japanese military, still firmly in control of the country, still refused to allow its government seek surrender. This section of the book, and this chapter in history, is a study in dysfunctional government. Toland brilliantly analyzes and explains how it took essentially two extraordinary events to bring about Japan's surrender. Firstly, the use by the United States of atomic weapons. Secondly, the unprecedented decision by the Emperor himself to insist upon Japan's acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration. Toland's analysis of the Emperor's role in the wartime Japanese government is fascinating and insightful. I had never before appreciated the unprecedented nature of Hirohito's intervention into actual decision making, and here Toland is convincing.
While I do not agree with all of Toland's conclusions in this book, that in no way changes the fact that this is a highly impressive work that every student of World War Two would do well to read. Toland's analysis and mastery of detail is impressive, and so is his ability to weave this detail into a readable and coherent work. One surprising shortcoming of this work in my opinion is that it is not footnoted in the usual fashion. This makes it more difficult for other scholars to contest the validity of some of Toland's conclusions. On the other hand, most readers will not notice or care about this.
This is an impressive work that sets the standard for analyzing Japan's role in the Second World War, and her decision to go to war against the United States. Recommended.
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23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Slow start" the best part, January 7, 2004
This review is from: The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire 1936-1945 (Hardcover)
I am intrigued to read in several reviews that the book gets off to a "slow start" in dealing with the period before Pearl Harbor. I have a keen interest in military history and sometimes feel this way about books that take too long to get to the action, but I didn't react that way here. Rather, I found the analysis of internal Japanese politics before Pearl Harbor to be the most engrossing part of the book, in part because I knew so little of this important area coming in, but in larger part due to the author's engrossing presentation. While the island-hopping and other military portions are extremely well done too, nothing distinguishes this work as surely as its insights to the internal functioning of the Japanese Govt. (and the minds of individual Japanese) as first war, and then the end of war, approached. I can see where the criticism of a "pro-Japanese" bias comes from, but I think it is ultimately unjustified. Toland lets his subjects' voices come through, in an informative and compelling way, and so we hear the voices of many of the key Japanese participants (or of those close to them.) Since that's a perspective we aren't normally exposed to in the U.S., I find it extremely useful and (to put it mildly) see no danger of the pro-Japanese perspective overwhelming the American understanding of the war.
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