My latest podcast is up on the New Books Network website! In it, I interview Jürgen Melzer about his history of the transnational factors in the development of Japanese aviation (which I reviewed here). Enjoy!

When the United States went to war against Japan in 1941, American pilots were shocked by the superior quality of the planes flown by their opponents. Believing that the Japanese were inferior technological copyists, the greater capability of many Japanese aircraft models quickly disabused them of their assumptions and forced them to adopt different tactics until American airplane manufacturers could catch up. In this book Jürgen Melzer examines how the Japanese exploited Western technological innovations and manufacturing processes to develop an aircraft industry that by the 1930s was in terms of quality the equal of any in the world, one that aided Japan's goals of empire-building through warfare.

Melzer begins his book by summarizing Japan's initial exploration of flight through the development of lighter-than-air craft. Here the role of the military and the "balloon fever" which gripped the Japanese foreshadowed developments when Japan turned to heavier-than-air flight after 1908. With Europe at the forefront of airplane by that point Japan sent two army officers there for training and purchased craft for them to fly upon their return as qualified pilots. Though Japan investigated air travel in a number of Western countries, for the first decade of development they relied mainly upon French training and purchases in establishing their air arm. Shifting priorities and disappointment with the poor quality of postwar French surplus led the Japanese government to turn to the Germans and the French after the First World War, as they sought both to exploit air power for naval warfare and to develop an indigenous aircraft industry.

While this effort created the later impression of the Japanese as technological mimics, Melzer details how the Japanese strove to limit their dependency upon Western manufacturers and know-how. This comes through especially in his description of Japan's interwar relationship with German airplane designers. Shackled by the Versailles treaty, German manufacturers were eager to develop export markets, with Japan among the most promising prospects. The Japanese particularly valued German innovations in all-metal planes, and worked to master their construction at a time when canvas planes were still the norm. While Germans such as Ernst Heinkel believed they could maintain a dependent relationship, by the mid-1930s Japanese designers had already caught up with German innovators, exploiting their ideas in new and innovative ways. So advanced was Japan's aircraft industry by then that during the Second World War they were able to develop rocket and jet engine technology with only halfhearted assistance from the Germans, only for their successes to come too late to reverse their imminent defeat.

Melzer's book offers readers a wide-ranging examination of how the Japanese exploited training and technology transfers to build a formidable industrial sector. In doing so, he provides a case study of how nations go from dependency to autonomy, if not in the end complete independence form outside influence. It's an interesting and well-argued analysis, one that will be of considerable interest to readers of aviation history, the history of technology, or of the Second World War and Japan's efforts to win it.

In September 1931, Japan began a series of conquests that ended fourteen years later with a surrender signed in Tokyo Bay and the dismantling of their empire. Yet despite the scale of Japan's dominion and its role in reshaping East Asia and the western Pacific there has been relatively little written about this empire. One of the few books available that gives readers a sense of the origins of the empire, its operations, and its legacy is this collection of essays. The product of a 1991 academic conference, the thirteen chapters that comprise the text offer readers an incomplete yet useful mosaic of its subject, one that is all the more worth reading because of the paucity of other works on the topic.

The essays in the book are divided into four groups, each of which examines different aspects of the empire. The first of these concentrates on the role Japan's prewar colonies in Korea and Taiwan played in their newly expanded empire, showing the ongoing Japanese efforts to assimilate their territories into a Japan-dominated East Asia. Here the two authors, Carter Eckert and Wan-yao Chou, emphasize the efforts of the Japanese to incorporate these territories into their economic network, even to the point of encouraging industrialization. Yet development increased the demand for raw materials at a time when the Depression-driven trends were causing trade to break down. This fueled the drive for further territories, which is the focus of the book's second and third sections. In these two parts, which together comprise the heart of the book, focus on the two stages of Japan's imperial expansion during this period: first the conquest of Manchuria, and then the Western imperial possessions in southeast Asia. Here readers learn of the growing domestic enthusiasm for empire, the effort to expand Japan's economic dominion of the region, and the response of indigenous groups in southeastern Asia to the Japanese-driven challenge to the Western empires in their region. The final section of the book expands the focus chronologically by considering the postwar legacy of Japan's empire and how it compared to that of its wartime partner, Nazi Germany. In these essays, the authors involved consider the enduring legacy of Japan's empire, and how it continued to define the region for the next half-century and more.

Though the essays themselves address specific topics, collectively they provide a surprisingly coherent overview of Japan's empire during this period, with the key arguments in the essays stitched together by Peter Duus's superb introduction at the start of the book into a comprehensive picture of its overall subject. The result is a work that serves as a useful resource for anyone seeking to learn about Japan's wartime empire and the changes it brought to eastern Asia. The authors' labors are especially valuable considering the long shadow the war continues to cast on the region. For while readers interested in the empire or the war itself will undoubtedly find much of interest in this collection, given the extent to which the region still bears the imprint of the conflict it is one that should be also read by anyone interested in understanding it today.

During the four years that the United States participated in the Second World War, three figures came to personify for the American public the enemy nations that comprised the Axis powers. Two of them, the German dictator Adolf Hitler and the Italian leader Benito Mussolini, were understandable choices that reflected the dominance both leaders enjoyed in their respective political systems. Yet the third figure, Hideki Tojo, was arguably a more questionable choice. Though he served as prime minister of Japan from October 1941 until July 1944, he was, to borrow the analogy from a foreign correspondent cited in Alvin Coox's short and efficient biography of the man, a bee in a hive of the militaristic leadership that drove Japan to war and led it to defeat.

One of the merits of Coox's book is the expertise he brings to navigating the complexities of army politics, a necessity considering the amount of Tojo's life he spent within it. The son of an army officer, as a young man he rose through the ranks by dint of his hard work. By 1933 he was appointed a major general and was soon drawn into national politics. Here Coox illuminates the fraught and often deadly nature of Japanese politics during this period, which saw extremist army officers taking it upon themselves to assassinate politicians and even plot the overthrow of the cabinet in an effort to move policy in a direction to their liking. Coox places Tojo within the ranks of the Tosei Ha, or Control Faction, which, while staunchly conservative, was comparatively more moderate than the extremist Kodo Ha, or Imperial Way Faction.

During this period Tojo thrived in a number of positions, acquiring the experience as well as many of the approaches he would employ once he became prime minister. Foremost among them was his use of "MP politics," a habit he picked up after serving as commander of the Kempei gendarmerie in Manchuria. Coox sees his time in Manchuria as particularly critical in forming his approach towards government, which was based more on command than on building a consensus. Nearly as important was his appointment as war minister in 1940, his service in which paved the way for his appointment as prime minister the following year. These offices put him at the heart of the decision-making process that led Japan to attack the United States in December 1941, one that Coox describes in detail to show the degree to which it reflected a consensus among all of the major political figures, not just Tojo.

In the immediate aftermath of the bombing of Pearl Harbor Tojo enjoyed a period of euphoria as Japan won victory after victory. As the tide turned against Japan, though, Tojo championed ever greater commitment and discipline as the means of attaining victory. With the fall of Saipan in July 1944 many officers concluded that victory was no longer possible, yet Tojo continued to stress the greater importance of values in a war increasingly driven by technology. Within weeks of Japan's defeat Tojo was identified as a war criminal and  arrested after a failed suicide attempt, leaving him to face the international military tribunal that ordered his execution in 1948.

Given the prominence of the war in the modern imagination, it is surprising that there are so few books about a leader who was such an important figure during it. This has the effect of increasing the value of Coox's book. As a longtime scholar of Japanese military history, he employs his considerable expertise to explaining the factors in Tojo's rise and the role he played in bringing his country into the most devastating war it ever faced. Though over forty years old, it still retains its value as an introduction to the most obscure of the Axis leaders and is the first book that English-language readers interested in learning about the man should seek out.

When it comes to history books, there are good ones and there are great ones. And then there are a few that are truly groundbreaking in their ability to take a subject that has been studied before and address it with such insight that it changes fundamentally the way we think about it. This is one of those books. For in describing the development of the Imperial Japanese Navy from the late 19th century to the attack on Pearl Harbor David Evans and Mark Peattie offers readers a revolutionary look at the thinking and planning that defined the shape of the Pacific War (as the war against the United States and the European imperial powers is called in Japan) before its first shot was ever fired.

Perhaps one of the most surprising things about the Imperial Japanese Navy is how relatively late it was established, for in spite of being an island nation Japan had no naval arm. This changed after the Meiji Restoration, as Japan began to look outward for the first time in centuries. Quickly appreciating the importance of naval arms to national power, the Japanese created a naval force tasked with protecting its shores. Turning to the British the Japanese not only brought over advisers from there to train their officers  but purchased many of its first vessels from its shipbuilders — a necessary step given the undeveloped state of Japanese industry at that time.

By the 1890s the Japanese possessed a small but respectable force, yet the navy still was junior to the army in both status and planning. This changed with Japan's wars of expansion, first with China in 1894-5, then with Russia ten years later. It was then that the Imperial Japanese Navy shifted from a coastal-defense role to one designed to project Japanese power in accordance with the dominant Western strategic thinking of that time. Japan's navy impressed observers with their performance in these two wars, especially with their defeat of the Russians. Here Evans and Peattie stress the importance of the battle of Tsushima both in establishing the navy's reputation and in defining its subsequent thinking. The clash was decisive in ending Russia's hopes for victory in the Russo-Japanese War, and — even more significantly — cemented the idea of the kantai kessen, or decisive battle, in Japanese naval thinking, which would define both the development of the IJN for the remainder of its existence and its conduct of the war against the United States forty years later.

This path was set virtually from the start. For the first decades of its existence Japanese naval strategists regarded regional powers — first China, then Russia — as their most likely opponents. Having defeated both countries, and with an alliance with Great Britain securely in place the United States now became the most likely opponent in a future war. Japan's response to international trends, from the arms races of the 1910s to the arms control treaties of the 1920s were shaped by this, as were ideas about warship design. This did not necessarily have to lead to war, but as Japan contemplated further expansion of its empire it always did so with an eye towards a possible challenge from the Americans, and prepared accordingly.

The result was a fleet designed to defeat the United States Navy in accordance with kantai kessen. Accepting that the United States would possess an unavoidable numerical advantage, the Japanese emphasized quality in naval design and the development of weapons such as the "Long Lance" torpedo and tactics such as night-time fighting that would offset the Americans' superior numbers. These were tested in maneuvers that sometimes cost lives, but resulted in a force which was ready to implement doctrine in practice when war came. The opportunity arose first in China in 1937; here Evans and Peattie stress the often underappreciated advantage four years of combat experience gave the IJN at the start of their conflict with the United States -- experience which the United States would offset only after months of bloody lessons in the South Pacific in 1942 and 1943.

Evans and Peattie conclude their book with a short chapter summarizing the impact of this development on Japan's conduct of the Pacific War. Yet the relative brevity of this section understates the value of this book for readers interested in the Japanese Navy's performance in the Second World War. This is by far the single best book in English on the history of the Imperial Japanese Navy, one that is likely to remain the definitive text on the subject and necessary reading for anyone who wants to learn about Japanese military history or the development of naval combat in the Pacific during the war.