A comprehensive and often controversial account of Japan's foreign and security policy before the Second World War based on War Crimes Trials materials, original Japanese sources, and detailed accounts by Japanese historians. Originally published in 1966. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This comprehensive work surveys the historical events and developments in Japan's polity, economy, society and culture.

This collection makes available key articles on the Japan-North American relationship from the Meiji era to the present. Volume one focuses on the necessity of Japanese modernization post-1868 and examines the build-up to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour. Volume two looks at the post-war period, in which US forces occupied Japan and were instrumental in its rebuilding as an economic superpower. In the years following this Japan and North America enjoyed a close yet occasionally fraught relationship, as competitors and allies. Volume two also examines the cultural ramifications of the influence of North America on Japan, and vice versa. Titles also available in this series include, Japan and South East Asia: International Relations (2001, 2 volumes, 295) and the forthcoming title Japanese Linguistics (2005, 3 volumes, c.425).

Great powers often initiate risky military and diplomatic inventions in far-off, peripheral regions that pose no direct threat to them, risking direct confrontation with rivals in strategically inconsequential places. Why do powerful countries behave in a way that leads to entrapment in prolonged, expensive, and self-defeating conflicts? Jeffrey W. Taliaferro suggests that such interventions are driven by the refusal of senior officials to accept losses in their state's relative power, international status, or prestige. Instead of cutting their losses, leaders often continue to invest blood and money in failed excursions into the periphery. Their policies may seem to be driven by rational concerns about power and security, but Taliaferro deems them to be at odds with the master explanation of political realism. Taliaferro constructs a "balance-of-risk" theory of foreign policy that draws on defensive realism (in international relations) and prospect theory (in psychology). He illustrates the power of this new theory in several case narratives: Germany's initiation and escalation of the 1905 and 1911 Moroccan crises, the United States' involvement in the Korean War in 1950-52, and Japan's entanglement in the second Sino-Japanese war in 1937-40 and its decisions for war with the U.S. in 1940-41.

This study describes the British government’s policy towards China during the first phases of the undeclared Sino-Japanese war, starting in July 1937 when the conflict in North China culminated in all-out hostilities; and ending in September 1939 when the outbreak of the war over Poland forced the British government to turn almost all its attention to Europe. The dilemmas confronting British policy-makers in the Far East are analysed together with the implementation of their subsequent solutions. Attention is focused on the question of British interests in China and on the decisive factors and considerations which determined British policy and Britain’s role in the Sino-Japanese war. Questions concerning the safety of the British subjects and the commercial community in China and their influence on the decision making process, the attitude towards Soviet influence in China and prospects of Communist take-over are also discussed. In the final analysis the book examines the widely debated subject of appeasement in its Asian context. It is argued that Britain pursued a policy towards Japan which gained strength without producing a Far Eastern Munich