The Japanese experience of war from the late-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century presents a stunning example of the meteoric rise and shattering fall of a great power. As Japan modernized and became the one non-European great power, its leaders concluded that an empire on the Asian mainland required the containment of Russia. Japan won the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-5) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5) but became overextended in the Second Sino-Japanese War (1931-45), which escalated, with profound consequences, into World War II. A combination of incomplete institution building, an increasingly lethal international environment, a skewed balance between civil and military authority, and a misunderstanding of geopolitics explains these divergent outcomes. This analytical survey examines themes including the development of Japanese institutions, diversity of opinion within the government, domestic politics, Japanese foreign policy and China's anti-Japanese responses. It is an essential guide for those interested in history, politics and international relations.

Author: S. C. M. Paine
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 03/06/2017
Pages: 220
Weight: 0.98lbs
Size: 9.42h x 6.12w x 0.69d
ISBN: 9781107011953


Review Citation(s):
Choice 09/01/2017

About the Author
Paine, S. C. M.: - S. C. M. Paine, William S. Sims Professor at the United States Naval War College, has spent eight of the last thirty years engaged in research and language study in Japan, Taiwan, China, Russia, and Australia. Her funding has included two Fulbright Fellowships along with fellowships from Japan, Taiwan, and Australia. She is the author of The Wars for Asia (Cambridge, 2012), which received the Richard W. Leopold Prize and the PROSE Award for European and World History, and was longlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize, and Imperial Rivals (1996), which received the Barbara Jelavich Book Prize.