Attention has been given to Japanese military policy primarily in the U.S. and Japan. Most discussion has been conducted by proponents of modestly expanded Japanese military capacity who focus on global and regional anti-Soviet strategy. Relatively little attention has been paid to potential adverse consequences of Japanese military expansion. Evaluation of adverse consequences is more often asserted than substantiated. Works on Japanese military policy offer broad rather than specific guidance for American policy on this subject: the U.S. should maintain its security ties with Japan and preserve its ability to guide Japanese military policy and the appearance of same. Few analysts are willing to welcome the imponderable effects of a new and independent regional power. Most specific policy recommendations in the literature relate to what steps Japan should take to strengthen its military and to integrate itself more fully into global anti-Soviet strategy. There is relatively little consideration of how to gauge or manage the regional or bilateral consequences of Japanese military expansion.

This work draws on a wide range of Chinese and Japanese sources to analyse the uncertain loyalties and complex internal pressures that drove Sino-Japanese interaction in prewar north China. It examines the shifting understandings of the North China problem in its practical, political and moral aspects, and challenges existing assumptions concerning Chinese relations with Japan and their impact on domestic politics.

For Japan, as one of the victorious allies, World War I meant territorial gains in China and the Pacific. At the end of the war, however, Japan discovered that in modeling itself on imperial Germany since the nineteenth century, it had perhaps been imitating the wrong national example. Japanese policy debates during World War I, particularly the clash between proponents of greater democratization and those who argued for military expansion, thus became part of the ongoing discussion of national identity among Japanese elites. This study links two sets of concerns—the focus of recent studies of the nation on language, culture, education, and race; and the emphasis of diplomatic history on international developments—to show how political, diplomatic, and cultural concerns work together to shape national identity.