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(More customer reviews)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book with intensive interviews by surviving principals, and had access to a wide range of archival data and previously unpublished data and facts.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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