Overview

One of the great spectacles of recent naval history was the Imperial Japanese Navy's instrumental role in Japan's rise from an isolationist feudal kingdom to a potent military empire, stridently confronting, in 1941, the world's most powerful nation. Years of painstaking research of previously untapped Japanese-language sources have produced this remarkable study of the navy's dizzying development, tactical triumphs, and final humiliating defeat. Unrivalled in its breadth of coverage and attention to detail, this important history explores the foreign and indigenous influences on the navy's thinking about naval warfare and how it planned for war. Focusing primarily on the much-neglected period between the world wars, two widely esteemed historians explain how the Japanese failed to prepare properly for the war in the Pacific despite an arguable advantage in capability. Maintaining the highest literary standards and supplemented by a dazzling array of illustration, this landmark work provides much important information not available in any other English-language source. A unique contribution to naval historiography, this new paperback edition will be sought after by serious historians and casual readers alike. Kaigun is satisfying for the general reader as well as for the old salt. It is an immensely impressive work of history and scholarship. The Japan Times

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9781306876858

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