This book is an insider’s account of the problems facing the Self-Defense Forces (SDF), Japan’s postwar military, authored by the country’s leading submariner, Hideki Nakamura. Specializing in the submarine fleet, he became an ace commander, in addition to serving as an analyst and professor in security studies. During his career, he became increasingly troubled by the SDF’s ability to fight due to legal, political, and operational restrictions placed upon it. This book, a translation of his 2017 bestseller, is a must-read for those interested in Japan’s military and its ability to partner with other countries.

Is Japan re-emerging as a normal, or even a great, military power in regional and global security affairs? This Adelphi Paper assesses the overall trajectory of Japan’s security policy over the last decade, and the impact of a changing Japanese military posture on the stability of East Asia. The paper examines Japan’s evolving security debate, set against the background of a shifting international environment and domestic policymaking system; the status of Japan’s national military capabilities and constitutional prohibitions; post-Cold War developments in the US Japan alliance; and Japan’s role in multilateral regional security dialogue, UN PKO, and US-led coalitions of the willing. It concludes that Japan is undoubtedly moving along the trajectory of becoming a more assertive military power, and that this trend has been accelerated post-9/11. Japan is unlikely, though, to channel its military power through greatly different frameworks than at present. Japan will opt for the enhanced, and probably inextricable, integration of its military capabilities into the US Japan alliance, rather than pursuing options for greater autonomy or multilateralism. Japan’s strengthened role as the defensive shield for the offensive sword of US power projection will only serve to bolster US military hegemony in East Asia and globally.

In 1944 the U.S. Army published this manual for its officers in the Pacific Theater an expanded version of the original 1942 manual of the same name—and ever since, it has been the best single reference source on the wartime Japanese military available in the English language. By 1944, the army had had time to assess its enemy closely and was coming to understand him, and its vast knowledge was distilled into the handbook. The handbook details the Japanese military system, field organization, tactics, and weapons and equipment, and the strengths and weaknesses that resulted from them. Extensively illustrated, it contains sections on the Japanese special forces, the military police, uniforms and insignia, and conventional signs and abbreviations. It covers, besides the army, the Japanese Air Service, with emphasis on its tactics and organization. Issued to officers for briefings and periodically updated, the handbook’s purpose was to assist in the winning of the war, and thus it strove to be absolutely reliable for its users in combat. It was compiled by a team of officers who integrated the research of others, and it contains information provided by the U.S. Marines and also by British and Australian intelligence. Packed with information, it is a major primary source that military historians and World War II buffs will find fascinating.

Modern Japan is not only responding to threats from North Korea and China but is also reevaluating its dependence on the United States, Sheila Smith shows. No longer convinced they can rely on Americans to defend their country, Tokyo's political leaders are now confronting the possibility that they may need to prepare the nation's military for war.

In Defense of Japan provides the first complete, up-to-date, English-language account of the history, politics, and policy of Japan's strategic space development. The dual-use nature of space technologies, meaning that they cut across both market and military applications, has had two important consequences for Japan. First, Japan has developed space technologies for the market in its civilian space program that have yet to be commercially competitive. Second, faced with rising geopolitical uncertainties and in the interest of their own economics, the makers of such technologies have been critical players in the shift from the market to the military in Japan's space capabilities and policy. This book shows how the sum total of market-to-military moves across space launch vehicles, satellites and spacecraft, and emerging related technologies, already mark Japan as an advanced military space power.

THE REALISTIC FACTS ABOUT JAPAN’S CAPACITY—IN MANPOWER AND IN NATIONAL MORALE—TO FIGHT THE “HOLY WAR” HER MILITARY LEADERS HAVE SO LONG PLANNED FOR HER In Japanese Military Masters: The Army in Japanese Life, author Hillis Lory answers fundamental questions in satisfactory detail. He describes the life and though of the peasant, the motives and personalities of the men close to the Throne. He traces the evolution of Japanese government from feudalism to modern power politics. He records the assassinations, the rebellions, the secret societies, the coups d’état that have shaped it. He recalls the struggle between the liberal and the military leaders for control of Japan’s destiny. “Among the many books about Japan that have appeared since Pearl Harbor, this book is one of the few that could fairly be called indispensable for its high informational content. The author has learned about as much as any foreign could learn about the organization and psychology and training and general make-up of the Japanese Army. And he puts his material together in the style of a good military report, without padding and exaggeration.—The New York Times Book Review

In this provocative history, James B. Wood challenges the received wisdom that Japan's defeat in the Pacific was historically inevitable. He argues instead that it was only when the Japanese military prematurely abandoned its original sound strategic plan—to secure the resources Japan needed and establish a viable defensible perimeter for the Empire—that the Allies were able to regain the initiative and lock Japanese forces into a war of attrition they were not prepared to fight. The book persuasively shows how the Japanese army and navy had both the opportunity and the capability to have fought a different and more successful war in the Pacific that could have influenced the course and outcome of World War II. It is therefore a study both of Japanese defeat and of what was needed to achieve a potential Japanese victory, or at the very least, to avoid total ruin. Wood's argument does not depend on signal individual historical events or dramatic accidents. Instead it examines how familiar events could have b