Michael A. Barnhart

The final confrontation : Japan's negotiations with the United States, 1941

This documented account of the Japanese journey to the Pacific War culminates in a fifth and final volume. The authors of these essays were given access to a wide range of primary materials, including not only those of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, but also a mass of previously unavailable documents from the former Imperial Army and Navy, the Justice Ministry, and the Foreign Ministry. Also consulted were the private papers of Prime Ministers Konoe Fumimaro and Okada Keisuke, General Ugaki Kazushige, and Colonel Ishiwara Kanji.

Japan's economic security and the origins of the pacific war

(1981). Japans economic security and the origins of the pacific war. Journal of Strategic Studies: Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 105-124.

Homecomings: The Belated Return of Japan's Lost Soldiers by Yoshikuni Igarashi

this chapter is enriched by a number of personal stories of triumph against adversity. Finally, chapter 6 (“Occupational Rehabilitation”) crosses the divide of war and defeat by examining how the program of demilitarization, one of the key pillars of the U.S.-led occupation, ended the special treatment accorded disabled veterans, and how this, coupled with a larger profi le for the war bereaved in Japanese society, marginalized them, causing them to become “the forgotten men.” There is no conclusion, chapter 6 serving as a chapter in its own right and an opportunity for some concluding remarks. This is a shame as it does not provide suffi cient space to draw together the various strands of the book’s thesis—the argument that “Japanese wounded servicemen are double casualties of history”—and to refl ect on what is a wide-ranging and highly engaging analysis of the treatment, rehabilitation, and representation of disabled veterans, particularly amputees, and its broader meaning for our understanding of wartime Japan and its postwar legacy. A substantial conclusion would have provided an opportunity to look back and forward, exploring the stark contrast between the rather pathetic depictions of disabled veterans after the Russo-Japanese War and the more heroic ones of the 1930s and 1940s, enabled by modern technologies and rehabilitation techniques. Just as the latter’s legacy for postwar Japan merits closer attention, so does the issue of war memory and why more recent debates about how the war should be remembered do not engage more fully with the fate of veterans with disabling injuries. Also, a separate conclusion might have provided an opportunity to consider the hiatus of 1941–45, to refl ect more on the impact of the war in the Pacifi c and the increasing reality of defeat on the care of disabled veterans. These criticisms aside, this is a powerful analysis of an important but neglected subject. I enthusiastically recommend it to my fi nal-year undergraduate students studying Japan during the Asia-Pacifi c War and Allied occupation and commend its use of a wide range of Japanese sources, together with its skillful use of personal narratives to bring the subject alive.

Book Review: The Decade of the Great War: Japan and the Wider World in the 1910s Edited by Tosh Minohara, Tze-ki Hon, and Evan Dawley:

The chapters by Hutchison, Cowman, and Wilkinson demonstrate that the most promising innovation of this volume is its interdisciplinary composition. Uniting literary and historical material alleviates the problem of the paucity of available sources giving a voice to the displaced themselves. It affords a fruitful methodological interchange between literary attention to textual construction and conventions of genre and historians’ sensitivity to the relationship between text and life. The value of this collaboration is not consistently realized throughout the volume, however. Laure Humbert’s thoughtprovoking study of UNRRA administration in the French Zone of occupied Germany in 1945–7 and J.M. Goodchild’s discussion of European refugees and Axis POWs in Britain could both benefit from a refugee voice. Smith’s claim that the soldier poetry she examines ‘articulates a displacement that was clearly a common experience’ requires reflection on the historical evidence (p. 32), and Iris and Niklas Guske’s engaging consideration of the appropriation of the memories of the displaced might apply the prism of mythmaking not just to the fictional accounts it discusses but also to the interviews it mines for ‘features of displacement’ (p. 226). Ultimately the volume begs more questions than it answers about intersections of narrative and experience, the individual and the state, and war and refugeedom.

Koshiro, Yukiko Imperial Eclipse: Japan's Strategic Thinking about Continental Asia before August 1945 Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 328 pp.,

of Khrushchev’s bedroom during the latter’s 1958 visit to Beijing, so that mosquitoes could have their way with the Soviet leader’s ample flesh? This time, his son adds, Khrushchev “did not allow himself to be provoked and ignored the mosquito bites” (390). Khrushchev in Power, is constructed chronologically, with 106 very short chapters telling the tale. The advantage of this approach is that it immerses the reader in the dailiness of Khrushchev’s life. The disadvantage is that it prevents the author from mounting his overall argument in a more organized way. That argument itself—that Khrushchev was a more thoroughgoing reformer than other scholars have recognized—is partly a comment on this reviewer’s biography, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (W. W. Norton & Company, 2003), which owed much to the help that Sergei Khrushchev gave me. Indeed, Sergei once told me that, when asked what he thinks of my book, he answers, “It is the best book about my father—except for all my own books.”

39.95, ISBN 978-0801451805 Publication Date: June 2013

been more compelling and interesting to read (perhaps in citations from the local Japanese American press) some voices who indeed expressed a sense of validation, or otherwise backed up the author’s assertions about the meaning of events. Finally, and I recognize this imposes my own interests on the author and thus criticizes a book she probably did not intend to write, Transpacifi c Field of Dreams offers virtually no discussion of the way the games were played on the fi eld. I was not looking for pitch-by-pitch or inning-by-inning accounts. But I wish Guthrie-Shimizu had discussed the claim that there is a cultural particularity in Japanese baseball’s game tactics or strategy or training regimes, as well as the strong rebuttals to this sort of essentialism. Such assertions, and a debate about them, has become a staple of the analysis of Japanese and American baseball in recent decades. Did the discourse of “samurai baseball” have no history in the early twentieth century, whether in the way Japanese promoters spoke of their game or in how Americans described it? It would have been fascinating to read some discussion of the discursive circuits that traversed the Pacifi c alongside this valuable study of baseball’s transpacifi c commercial and social circuits.

The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945 ed. by Mark Peattie, Edward Drea, Hans van de Ven (review)

The equality legislation of the early 1970s completed the integration of women into the men’s structures that was already under way in many departments. Although young women tended to welcome the change, Jackson stresses the negative consequences for women police. It meant the loss of a separate female police culture and a distinctly feminine approach to police work. It also resulted in increased sexual harassment and discrimination against women in promotions; by 1982 the proportion of women officers in England and Wales holding the rank of sergeant was less than one-half of what it had been in 1971. Jackson’s book is based on extensive research in police records and the National Archives, as well as over 40 oral histories with former policewomen, which she uses effectively to demonstrate, among other things, why female officers were especially effective at undercover surveillance work. It includes perceptive analyses of the changing social class of female police recruits, the continuing efforts by women police leaders to reshape the image of policewomen to convince potential recruits (and the public) that police work was a respectable job for women (uniforms that conveyed ‘smart femininity’ were crucial), and the changing attitudes of policewomen responsible for policing the sexual behavior of other women (including prostitutes). Women Police is a thoughtful and provocative book which raises important questions about the assumptions underlying women’s history. This should make it of interest to a much wider range of readers than those concerned solely with women police.

Book Review: Thomas Burkman, Japan and the League of Nations: Empire and World Order, 1914—1938, Honolulu, University of Hawai’i Press, 2008; xv + 289 pp.;

and the world are now vying to determine what is meant by responsibility. Surely a starting point for individuals or nations is to cease looking elsewhere for explanations and to begin recognizing their own flaws. These two books should help considerably in advancing the urgent project of defining and assessing responsibility, not only for Japan but for all combatants, and not only for World War II but for all conflicts and modes of political violence.

58.00 hbk; ISBN 97808248290827

Book reviewed: Francis J. Gavin. Gold, Dollars, and Power: The Politics of International Monetary Relations, 1958–1971. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. 280 pp. Illus., tables, notes, bibliography, index.

Making Waves: Politics, Propaganda, and the Emergence of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1868-1922 (review)

45.00 (cloth).