Sources for Japanese viewpoint/pre-Pearl Harbor (1 Viewer)

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After reading some of the recommendations such as the above, you may feel that Japan contained many cliques (Army, Navy, Foreign Ministry, Planning Board, Imperial Palace, etc.) who co-operated poorly. "Pearl Harbor as history: Japanese-American relations, 1931-1941" edited by Dorothy Borg and Shumpei Okamoto (Columbia University Press, 1973, ISBN: 0231037341) contains chapters focusing on such groups or on particular issues and is very useful.

Of the particular groups, the IJN is probably the best described in the books available in English. "The Pearl Harbor Papers: Inside the Japanese Plans", edited by Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon, Potomac Books, 1999, ISBN-10: 1574882228, "The Pacific War Papers: Japanese Documents of World War II" also edited by Donald M. Goldstein, and Katherine V. Dillon, Brassey's , 2005, ISBN-10: 1574886320 and "The Japanese Navy in World War II: In the Words of Former Japanese Naval Officers" by David C. Evans, Naval Institute Press; 2nd edition, 1986, ISBN-10: 0870213164 are allowed some quite senior IJN officers to give their reflections. "Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887-1941" by David C. Evans and Mark R. Peattie (Naval Institute Press, 2003, ISBN-10: 0870211927), "From Mahan to Pearl Harbor: American Strategic Theory and the Rise of the Imperial Japanese Navy" by Sadao Asada (Naval Institute Press, 2006) and "Old Friends, New Enemies: The Royal Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy, vol. 1: Strategic illusions, 1936-1941" by Arthur J. Marder (Oxford University Press, 1981, ISBN: 0198226047) are very good sources and and aircraft fan might also like "Sunburst: The Rise of Japanese Naval Air Power, 1909-1941" by Mark R. Peattie (Naval Institute Press, 2001, ISBN: 1557504326) although I don't remember it containing much about politics. "Reluctant Allies: German-Japanese Naval Relations in World War II" by Yoichi Hirama, Berthold J. Sander-Nagashima, Axel Niestle, and Hans-Joachim Krug (Naval Institute Press; 2002, ISBN-10: 1557504652) by contrast does contain some details of pre-war political contacts. There are also two articles that may lead us to doubt the idea that the Navy was a force for restrain: "Nanshin: Budget-Maximizing Behavior, the Imperial Japanese Navy and the Origins of the Pacific War" by Brian Edward Dollery, Zane A. Spindler and Craig Parsons, Public Organization Review, 2004, vol. 4, issue 2, pages 135-155 can be found online at EconPapers: Nanshin: Budget-Maximizing Behavior, the Imperial Japanese Navy and the Origins of the Pacific War. I found a free .pdf of Nanshin somewhere but have forgotten the site. The other article "The Imperial Japanese Navy and the Constructed Consciousness of a South Seas Destiny, 1872–1921" by J. Charles Schencking Modern Asian Studies (1999), 33 : 769-796 CJO - Abstract - The Imperial Japanese Navy and the Constructed Consciousness of a South Seas Destiny, 1872–1921 discusses a period before your main interest but tells a similar story. There is a strong overlap between Nanshin and Barnhart's "Japan Prepares for Total War".

I have not read much about the Army but "The Way of the Heavenly Sword: The Japanese Army in the 1920s" by Leonard Humphreys (Stanford, 1995), "Japan's Imperial Army: Its Rise and Fall, 1853-1945" by Edward J. Drea (University Press of Kansas, 2009, ISBN-10: 0700616632) and "In the Service of the Emperor: Essays on the Imperial Japanese Army" by Edward J. Drea (University of Nebraska Press, 1998, ISBN-10: 0803266383) are generally recommended. You will also want "Nomonhan: Japan Against Russia, 1939" by Alvin Coox (Stanford University Press, 1990, ISBN-10: 0804718350) and "Nomonhan : Japanese-Soviet tactical combat, 1939" by Edward J. Drea (University of Michigan Library, 1981) although you can read the last online (see http://www.cgsc.edu/carl/download/csipubs/nomohan/nom_intro.pdf). A further online source is the Japanese monographs at http://ibiblio.org/pha/monos/. You need histories of the Second Sino-Japanese War but I only have "When Tigers Fight: The story of the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945" by Dick Wilson (Viking Press, 1982, ISBN 0-670-76003-X).

I have not read Ian Nish's "Japanese foreign policy, 1869–1942: Kasumigaseki to Miyakezaka", (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977) or his "Japanese Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period" (Praeger, 2002) but those may be the place to start looking for details of the Foreign Ministry apart from the chapter in "Pearl Harbor as history". Shigemitsu Mamoru's memoirs "Japan and her destiny : my struggle for peace" has been translated into English (Hutchinson, 1958 ). You might also find Ambassador Joseph Grew's "Ten Years in Japan" of interest Ten Years in Japan - Google Books.

Michael A. Barnhart's "Japan Prepares for Total War" and Edward S. Miller's "Bankrupting the Enemy" have been suggested by previous posters and are excellent. David Flath's "The Japanese Economy" and Christopher Howe's "The Origins of Japanese Trade Supremacy" give a slightly less pessimistic view of the same data, showing that Japan grew much faster than most other countries during the Thirties. Chalmers A. Johnson's "MITI and the Japanese Economic Miracle" describes the push towards a controlled economy over the same period. Louise Young's "Japan's Total Empire" is an invaluable source on Manchuria and its influence on Japan itself as the testing ground for a command economy. Haruo Iguchi's "Unfinished Business: Ayukawa Yoshisuke and U.S. - Japan relations, 1937 – 1953" also discusses Manchuria, especially Ayukawa's attempts to attract investment. The older "Japan's Quest for Autonomy: National Security and Foreign Policy" by James B. Crowley (Princeton,1966) is still frequently referenced (but I have not yet found a copy). An important recent book is "Lever of Empire: The International Gold Standard and the Crisis of Liberalism in Prewar Japan" by Mark Metzler (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005, ISBN: 9780520244207). This is on the period well before 1941 but helps to explain why Japan was so hostile to Anglo-American investment in China.

I have no idea what ordinary Japanese were thinking in 1941 but it may be more complicated than is generally believed. For example, Saito Takao, who was expelled from the Diet for speaking against the Army in 1940, was re-elected in 1942. Going back ten years, "The Manchurian Crisis and Japanese Society, 1931-33" by Sandra Wilson (Routledge, 2001, ISBN-10: 0415250560) describes how Japanese opinions shifted over that period. "Justice in Japan: The Notorious Teijin Scandal" by Richard H. Mitchell (University of Hawaii Press, 2002, ISBN-10: 0824825233) describes some of the legal pressures against civilian politicians. However, the illegal pressures could be even more potent as described by "The Double Patriots: Study of Japanese Nationalism" by Richard Storry, (Houghton Mifflin,1956, reprinted Greenwood Press, 1973, ISBN-10: 0837166438 ) and "Revolt in Japan: the young officers and the February 26, 1936 incident" by Ben-Ami Shillony (Princeton UP, 1973, ISBN 0691075484).
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One of the most direct answers to your question of what Japanese leaders knew about the world might be provided by "Japanese Intelligence in World War II" by Ken Kotani (Osprey Publishing, 2009, ISBN-10: 1846034256) but, alas, my copy has not yet arrived from Amazon. "The Shadow Warriors of Nakano: A History of the Imperial Japanese Army's Elite Intelligence School" by (Potomac Books, 2002, ISBN-10: 1574884433) is good but is more about special forces operations than about intelligence. However, some of these such as "Operation Watanabe" had important political consequences.

The other obvious sources on Japan's leaders are their biographies including "Konoe Fumimaro and the Failure of Peace in Japan, 1937-1941: A Critical Appraisal of the Three-time Prime Minister" by Kazuo Yagami (McFarland, 2005, ISBN-10: 0786422424), "Tojo and the coming of the War" by Robert JC Butow (Princeton University Press, 1961), "The Reluctant Admiral: Yamamoto and the Imperial Navy" by Agawa Hiroyuki (Kodansha International, 2000, ISBN-10: 4770025394 but translated from the 1965 Japanese original), "Military Intervention in Pre-War Japanese Politics Admiral Kato Kanji and the 'Washington System'" by Ian Gow (Routledge, 2004, ISBN: 978-0-7007-1315-8 ), "Ishiwara Kanji and Japan's confrontation with the West" by Mark R. Peattie (Princeton University Press, 1975, ISBN 0691030995), "The Agony of Choice: Matsuoka Yōsuke and the Rise and Fall of the Japanese Empire" by David Lu (Lexington Books, 2002), "Emperor Hirohito and Showa Japan" by Stephen Large ( Routledge, 1992) and "Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan" by Herbert Bix (Harper Perennial, 2001, ISBN-10: 0060931302). Most of the authors defend their subjects. One that is about to arrive is "Sailor Diplomat: Nomura Kichisaburo and the Japanese-American War" by Peter Mauch (Harvard, 2011, ISBN: 978 0 674 05599 5). If we read the abstract at http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118770188/abstract we discover that Mauch's research shows that Nomura was also doing a good job. Bix, by contrast, does a very convincing hatchet job on Hirohito until we notice that Hirohito's views on controlling China were also shared by almost all the other Japanese leaders. There is also a book on Ōshima Hiroshi by Carl Boyd, "Hitler's Japanese Confidant: General Hiroshi Ōshima and Magic Intelligence, 1941-1945" (University Press of Kansas, 1993, ISBN 0700611894) which focuses on allied code breaking rather than defending its subject.

Good luck!! The wall may collapse.
 

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